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THE UNIVERSITY 


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‘PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION. 


9 | ae edition of the InstituTES contains the “ Analysis” 
es heretofore published. as a separate volume. It is alo : | q 
A ~~ farnished with a pretty copious Index, the want of which i 


Bes. has long been felt. It is hoped that the work will be found 
ni oa better adapted, both for students and general readers, than 


ever before. 





re ‘ : _ Had not the work been stereotyped, the undersigned — 4 
ag ; would have gladly revised the body of the book, especially : : 
ue so far as to present the Greek quotations in a more correct | a 

and: sightly form. 7 


cae J. M’Cuntoce, 
wei’ 3 New-York, May 6, 1859. | "q 





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ADVERTISEMENT TO THE LONDON EDITION. 


Tue object of this work is to exhibit the Evipences, Doc- 
TRINES, Morais, and Instrrurions of Christianity, in a form 
adapted to the use of young Ministers, and Students in 
Divinity. It is hoped also that it may supply the deszde- 
ratum of a Bopy or Divinity, adapted to the present state 
of theological literature, Rents Calvinistic on the one hand, 
nor Pelagian on the other. 
The reader will perceive that the ABEL has been to follow 
a course of plain and close argument on the various sthjects 
discussed, without any attempt at embellishment of style, 
and without adding practical uses and reflections, which; 
however important, did not fall within the plan of this 
publication. The various controversies on fundamental and _ 
important points, have been introduced; but it has been 
the sincere aim of the Author to discuss every subject with 
fairness and candour: and honestly, but in the spirit of 
“THE TRUTH,’ which he more anxiously wishes to be taught 
than to teach, to exhibit what he believes to be the sense 
of the Holy Scriptures, to whose authority, he trusts, he 
has unreservedly subjected all his own opinions. 
London, March 26, 1823. 


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CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. 


eon = 


PART I—EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 


I, PRESUMPTIVE EVIDENCE. 
Analysis. Institutes 


A THaT A DIRECT REVELATION WOULD BE MADE IN 
ERY BUR ORNS eh Ae Tra sa A RA ty a a eT E Ca ae ill. 5 


B THAT A DIRECT REVELATION WOULD BE MADE IN 
THE MANNER IN WHICH CHRISTIANITY PROFESSES 
TOVELA V SRE EN Ce VIA TOM EN aaa aril utdictn tors Clack w Gre hone v. 62 


Il. Direct EvIpENcE. 


Preliminaries .....ccccccesccce ie EGA eevee ras vi. 70 
I. EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 


1. As TO THE BOOKS OF THE REVELATION...... Morse 
A. ANTIQUITY OF THE SCRIPTURES ...........00. vil. 107 

B. UNcoRRUPTED PRESERVATION OF THE SCRIP- 
TURES ...... EMM rach Mme eer cer Ne has Seg Vil. 184 

2. AS TO THE SUBSTANCE OF THE REVELATION...... 
A. Tot ARGUMENT FROM MIRACLES........ OOS MeR ETO We be 
B. THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY ..........-. Merwe wep 


II. INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 


A. DOCTRINES OF THE SCRIPTURES....... Rady an gee Xx) e208 

B.. MokAs OF THE SCRIPTURES. 2666.5 50c seu et xl. = =-.2.25 
COOTYLECOR THE -DSCRIPTURES ths Seen cctces sae ee xii. 230 
Peon ATER AT Fy VIDENCE soc chicks Uaule edd Bh, Ske ey ect SER re 
IV. MtscELLANEOUS OBJECTIONS ANSWERED.........- xil. 236 


PART II.—DOCTRINES OF CHRISTIANITY. 
I. DocTRINES RELATING TO GOD. 


ALE XISTENCE OP. GOD: oc cies. ass» TNA sweats bw.s Xiv. 263 
BP AVETRIBU TES: OF COD eich a saws tio gevaneins ED Tn te cae X Vile OSE 
C. Persons oF THE GODHEAD— 
Ce pL TOEM ETON foe's dee iatetes eb SMEG wale Ohara nial sal ek ehaiins 4 relent eee 
(11.) Drvintty or CHRIST........... eapaieis waiieles eee o OV ie ane 
PETE ER ESONFOMMCELEIOT: os wiy's so wins! tie avout e Evaciienieis RR er eee 


(1v.) PERSGNALITY AND DEITY OF THE Hoty Guosr . XxXxiy. 628 


CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. 


Il. DocTRINES RELATING TO MAN. 


Analysis. institutes, 
A. ORIGINAL SIN. 


I. THE PRIMITIVE CONDITION OF MAN........200+ XXXV. 3 
ThE RATA OFC DUAN aim ok oo a oe é ool) Vee 
Lil? R&suuTs GF THE FAC Or MAN so iste doce XXxvil. 43 
B. REDEMPTION. 
Ie) PRINCIPLES OF REDEMPTION *L. 4. aes ws ne eee SLOAN, 
ll. BENEFITS OF REDEMPTION (i... 4... sols cee eee xlix. 207 
IND EXTENT OR REGEMETION So cous Cee ee eee lv. 284 
IV. FuRTHNER BENEFITS OF REDEMPTION ........... Ixx. 450 


PART IIL—MORALS OF CHRISTIANITY. 


beta Moma Laws i. oka eel ee ee Ixxil. 468 
Tl DIRS TO. GOD oss ly ak s chee its a aoe en ee Ixxiv. 480 
fil. DUTIES ‘TO OUR NEIGHBOUR<s... cde. we ob Loe ey Ixxvill. 524 


PART IV.—INSTITUTIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 
Be Lee CHRISTIAN CHURCH: 2). 5. 74 Bae cee ee eee IXXXi ae 
II. THe SACRAMENTS. 


1. NUMBER AND NATURE OF THE SACRAMENTS. Ixxxv. 606 


Tl. DACRAMENT.OF .DAPTISM... 6 oo. sc ccoma careaee Ixxxvi. 619 
Ill. SACRAMENT OF THE LORD’S SUPPER ........ xc. 660 
INDEX OF ‘TEXTS:.... 0. Ae erettd shen te § Oe aes wanna amt Pg Giz 


GENERAL INDEX....... at abhle Choe e Lare eh Oy 6 2 onan 676 


ANALYSIS 


OF 


WATSONS THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 


GENERAL DIVISION. | 


PART Analysis. 
I. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. . . ii. 
II. DOCTRINES OF CHRISTIANITY... xiv. 

Ill. MORALS OF CHRISTIANITY... . lxxii. 


IV. INSTITUTIONS OF CHRISTIANITY lxxxiii. 


Institutes. 
vol. 1. Hs 


i Oo 
“ 11. 468 
ML Loee 


USdiera veal ets Ringed oo od ada ed Es 


EVIDENCES OF THE DIVINE AUTHORITY OF THE 
HOLY SCRIPTURES. 


OUTLINE. ; 
I. PRESUMPTIVE evidence. 
A. That a direct revelation would be made in some way. (Pp. 1-62.) 
B. That it would be made in this way, i. e., in the manner in which Chris- 

tianity professes to have been revealed. (Pp. 62-70.) 

II. Direct evidence, preliminary to the introduction of which are considered 

(1.) The kind and degree of evidence necessary to authenticate a reve- 
lation. (Pp. 70-95.) 

(2.) The use and limitation of reason in religion; (pp. 95-105 ;) after ° 
which the positive evidences are introduced under the following 
heads :—viz. 

(1.) EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 

I. Preliminaries. 

(A.) Antiquity of the Scriptures. (Pp. 105-133.) 

(B.) Uncorrupted preservation of the books of Scripture. (Pp. 134- 
141. 

(C.) cere of the testimony of the sacred writers; (pp. 141-146 5) 
which being established, of course proves the genuineness and 
authenticity of the books of Scripture. 

If. Argument. 

(A.) From miracles. 

Real miracles were wrought. (Pp. 146-156.) 
Objections to the proof from MIRACLES answered. (Pp. 156-175.) 

(B.) From prophecy. 

Real predictions were delivered. (Pp. 175-193.) 
Objections to the proof from PROPHECY answered. (Pp. 194-204.) 
(1.) INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 

(A.) The excellence and beneficial tendency of the doctrines of Serip- 
ture. (Pp. 205-225.) 

(B.) Moral tendency of the Scriptures. (Pp. 225-230.) 

(C.) Style and manner of the sacred writers. (Pp. 220, 231, 232.) 

C(I.) CotLtaTERAL EvipENcE. (Pp. 232-236.) And finally 
(IV.) Miscellaneous OBJECTIONS are answered. (Pp. 236-262.) 


ANALYSIS OF WATSON’3 INSTITUTES. “i 


PRESUMPTIVE EVIDENCE. 


a. Presumptive evidence that a direct revelation would be made in SOME way. 
I. (Chap. i.) MAN A MORAL AGENT. 

a.) Man has always been considered capable of performing moral actions. 
which are—voluntary actions, having respect to some rule. 

b.) Antecedent to human laws, there must have been a perception of thie 
difference of moral actions, because many actions would be julged 
good or evil, were all civil codes abolished. 

c.) This -perception may be traced, in part, te experience and obser- 
vation of the injurious tendency of vice, and the beneficial results 
of virtue ;—but 

d.) It cannot be so traced entirely. There has been, among all men, a 
constant reference to the will of God, or of supposed deities, as a 
rule to determine the good or evil of the conduct of men. 

We derive from these considerations two weighty presumptions: 
supposing the Theist to grant the existence of a Supreme Creator, 
of infinite power, wisdom, &c. :— 

First, (from a, b, and c,) That those actions which men consider good, 

have the implied sanction of the will of the Creator. 

SrconpD, That they were originally, in some way, enjoined as his law, and 
their contraries prohibited. 

fl. (Chap. 2.) THE RULE WHICH DETERMINES THE QUALITY OF MORAL 
ACTIONS MUST BE PRESUMED TO BE MATTER OF REVELATION 
FROM GOD. 

a.) Creation implies government—and government implies Jaw—which 
must be revealed:—and a revelation of divine will may be made 
either, (1.) By significant actions, or (2.) By direct: communication 
in language. ‘The Theist admits that (1) has been done. The Chris- 
tian admits (1) and (2) both: declaring (1) to be insufficient, and 
the question is, On which side is the presumption of truth ? 

b.) We assert that natural indications are insufficient for the formation 
of a virtuous character, and illustrate the deficiency by reference 
to temperance—justice—benevolence—worship—prayer—a, future 
state, and the pardon of sin. 

III. (Chaps. 3, 4, 5.) A is proved BY THE WEAKNESS OF HUMAN REASON 
AND THE WANT OF AUTHORITY IN HUMAN OPINIONS. (Pp. 15--44.) 

a.) Granting that a perfect reason could determine the moral quality of 
actions,— Yet (1.) That perfect reason is not to be found; (2.) Men 
differ greatly in their reasoning powers; (3.) Men are not sufficiently 
contemplative, nor sufficiently honest, for such inquiries; (4.) We 

_ find that men bring down the rule to the practice, rather than raise 
the practice to the rule. 

b.) But supposing truth discovered, and intellectual men appointed te 
teach others, what authority have they? 


lv ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES 


1. We answer a priori, no other authority than the opinion of a teacher, 
which might be received or not. 
2. And facts are suflficien‘ly in proof of this.—Cicero, &e. 
ec.) (Chap. 4.) But reason, alone, cannot determine the moral quality of 
actions. (1.) Reason is an erring faculty, and its exercise is limited 
by our knowledge. (2.) It is one thing to assent to a doctrine when 
discovered and proposed, and another to make such discovery origin- 
ally. (3.) The principles of (what is called) naturai religion com- 
mand the assent of reason, but the question is, Whence came they $ 
(4.) Certainly they were never mentioned as discoveries, either by 
the sacred writers, or sages of antiquity. 
d.) In fact, sober views of great religious truths have been found nowhere, 
since patriarchal times, save in the sacred writings :—thus, 
(1.) Existence of Gop. Ancient doubts. Modern Budhists. 
(2.) Creation of matter. Eternity of matter was the doctrine of the 
Tonic, Platonic, Italic, and Stoic schools. Aristotle. 
(3.) Individuality of the human soul. 5; 
(4.) Doctrine of Providence. Ancients believed in conflicting and 
subordinate gods. 
(5.) Immortality of the human soul. Ancient doctrine of absorption 
Modern Hindoo notion of annihilation. 
e.) (Chap. 5.*) Those truths which are found in the writings and religious 
systems of the heathen can be traced to revelation. 


— 


(1.) There was a substratum of common opinions among all early na- 
tions, in regard to facts and doctrines which are contained in the 
Old Testament :—thus, golden age, sacrifice, formation of the 
world, &c. (P. 27.) 

(2.) (Pp. 27, 28, &e.) Adam, a moral agent, must have had instruction 
from the Creator, and his knowledge might easily have beet 
transmitted to Noah’s time, for Methuselah was contemporary with 
both Adam and Noah. Then after the flood, the system would of 
course be propagated by Noah’s descendar ts, and we find it re- 
ceived in the family of Abraham. Subsequently it was doubtless 
vastly diffused by the dispersions and restorations of the children 
of Israel. Nine conclusions. (P. 33.) 

IV. A is proved by the NECESSITY OF REVELATION,—evinced, 
a.) By the state of religious knowledge among the heathen, (chap. v1,) 
with regard to the jirst principles of religion: viz. 

1 God. The notion of subordinate deities obtained equally with 
that of one supreme God. The eternity of matter and _ its 
perversity, not to be controlled even by God, were favourite 
opinions. 

2. Providence. If admitted at all, the doctrine was vitiated and coun- 
teracted by other opinions. The Epicureans denied it; Plato 





¢ The note. to this chapter are very valuable, and should be studied carefully, in con- 
nexion with the text: 


ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. Vv 


Joined fortune with God; and Polytheism gave up the world to 
opposing and conflicting powers. 

3. Future state. Oriental doctrines of transmigration and absorption. 
Periodical destruction and renovation. Aristotle, Democritus, 
Heraclitus, and Epicurus either denied or refused to countenance 
the doctrine of the soul’s existence after death. Cicero doubted ; 
Pliny and Cesar denied it; Seneca wavered. 

bd.) By the state of morals among the heathen. (Chap. vii.) 

1. Their moral and religious systems were doubtless from a common 
source. | 

2. But the rules had become involved in obscurity, their injunctions 
lacked authority, and the general practices of men had become 
vicious. The subject is illustrated by adverting to certain pre- 
cepts of the second table, and showing that, although heathen 
nations have been sensible of the obligation of these, among 
all of them the rule has been perverted in theory and violated 
in practice. 

(1.) Murder and suicide. Disregard of life among heathen. Gladia- 
torial combats. Treatment of slaves and children. 

(2.) Hatred and revenge. Cicero. Aristotle. 

(3.) Adultery, divorce, fornication, &c. Laws in regard to these, 
though acknowledged, yet grossly violated among heathen 
nations, even down to crimes wdpa $vowy. 

(4.) Theft and rapine. Honesty almost unknown among heathen. 

(5.) Lying. Menander. Plato. India. 

e.) By the fact, that their religions themselves were destructive of morality. 

(Chap. viii.) 

1. Their gloomy superstitions fostered ferocity and cruelty. Human 
sacrifices among ancients, and also in modern Africa, Asia, and 
America. 

2. Their religions were as productive of impurity as of bloodshed. 
Roman Filoralia. Mysteries. Indian temple worship. 

B. Presumptive evidence that a direct revelation would be made in THIS WAY: 
i. e., in the manner in which Christianity professes to have been revealed. 
(Pp. 62-70.) 

a) A supernatural manifesiation of truth should, 
1 Contain expiicit information on those subjects which are most important 
to man; 
2. Accord with the principles of former revelations ; 
8. Have a satisfactory external authentication ; 
4, Contain provisions for its effectual promulgation ; 
p.) All these conditions are fulfilled in the Scriptures. 
1 They give information as to GOD, MAN, a MEDIATOR, PROVIDENCE, 

FUTURE STATE, &c. 

2. Three distinct religious systems, the Patriarchal, Mosaic, and Christian, 
harmonize in their doctrines and objects. 


vl ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


3. The Mosaic and Christian revelations profess to rest on external evi 
dence. 

4. Provision made (1.) By writing. (2.) By commemorative rites, 8 
(3.) By accredited teachers. 


II. DIRECT EVIDENCE. 


Two preliminaries. 

(1) (Chap. ix.) The evidences necessary to authenticate a revelation. (P. 70.) 

1 EXTERNAL, principal and most appropriate: if not to the immediaty’ 
recipient, at least to those to whom he communicates it. There are 
two branches of the external proof, Miracles and Prophecy. 

(a.) Mrracues. 
1. Definition. 1.) Popular. 2.) Philosophic. 3.) Theological. 
2. Possibility of miracles. (Pp. 74, 75.) 
3. Distinction between real miracles and prodigies. Criteria. (P. 76.) 
4. Necessity of connexion between even such real miracles, the mes- 
senger, and his message. (P. 78.) 
5. Human testimony sufficient to establish the credibility of miracles. (Pp. 
78, 79.) 
(1.) Hume's objection. 
(2.)*Replies to it by Paley—Llandaff—Campiell. 
6. Fitness of the evidence of miracles as a ground of universal belief. 
(P. 85.) 
(b.) PRopHEcy. 
1. Possibility not to be denied. Dilemma. 
2. Adequateness as a proof. 
INTERNAL. 
(a.) Nature of the evidence. 
(b.) Its rank in the scale of evidence. 
1. Not necessary: sufficient proof without it: but nevertheless useful. 
2. Not primary, but confirmatory. The contrary opinion not only 


supposes us capable of judging fully of the doctrines revealed, but \ 
also renders the external testimony comparatively nugatory. Two ‘ 
sources of this error. x 
(1.) The notion that miracles might be wrought to attest unworthy 
doctrines. 


(2.) A confounding of the rational with the authenticating eviden ‘e 
3. Not so well adapted to the mass of mankind as external evidence. 
3. COLLATERAL. Nature of the evidence stated. (P. 94.) 
(II) (Chap. xi.) The use and limitation of reason in religion. 
(a.) Use of reason in regard to revelation. 
1. To investigate the evidences of its divine authority. 
2. To interpret the meaning of the record. 


Ne 
oe 


GANS _ EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. \ vu 


) LIMITATION. | t 
1. It must not decide in cases where the nature of things is not known, 
either by or without revelation. 
2. The things compared must be of the same nature, and the comparison 
- must be made in the same respects. i, 
These preliminaries being settled, we now proceed to adduce poster eve 


dences, of which there are ihxee heads, viz. :— 


ee 


I. EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 


(1.) Preliminaries. 
(A.) (Chap. xii.) ANTIQUITY OF THE SCRIPTURES, t 
a.) (P. 107.) The persons who were the immediate wmstruments of these 

revelations, existed at the periods assigned. Proved, ' 

(1.) By the very existence of 1.) The Jewish polity; and 2) The 

Christian religion. 

(2.) By the testimony of ancient authors. 

1. As to Moses. Manetho, Apollonius, Strabo, Justin, Pliny, Tacitus, 
Juvenal, Longinus, Diod. Siculus, &e. 

2. As to Christ. Suetonius, Tacitus. 


b.) (P. 109.) The Booxs which contain the doctrines are of the date as-, 


signed to them. Proved, 
(1.) As to Old Testament. 

1. By the language in which it is written. 

2. By Josephus’ Catalogue. 

3. By the Septuagint, and by Samaritan Pentateuch. 

4. By LesLir’s ARGUMENT, which gives four rules for determining 
the truth of matters of fae all which are applied with success, 
to the Old Testament, viz. 

(1.) The matter of fact, must ie cognizable by the senses. 
(2.) The matter of fact must be publicly done. 
- (3.) The matter of fact must be commemorated by monuments and 
outward actions, 
(4.) Which must date from the time of the matters of fact. 
(2.) As to New Testament. 

1. By Leslie’s Argument, as before. 

2. By internal evidence from the narration itself. 

3. Testimony of adversaries. CrLSus, PorpHyRY, HIEROCLEs, 
JULIAN. 

4, Quotations by subsequent authors, from the apostles downward 
(P. 126.) 

(B.) (Chap. xiii.) UNcoRRUPTED PRESERVATION OF THE BOOKS OF 
ScriptTureE. (P. 134.) 
a.) The books are SUBSTANTIALLY the same as when written. Proved, 
(1.) As to Old Testament. By the list of Josephus, Septuagint, and 
Samaritan Pentateuch. 


s 


PY ahs Mieke tance a » 


~ 


vni ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTE = 


~~ a 
5 

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(2.) As to New Testament. By the Catalogues of Origen, Athanasius, = ~~. _ 


Cyril, &c., from A. D. 230, downward. 
b.) But it can be shown also, that they have descended to us without any 
material alteration whatever. 
(1.) As to Old Testament. 

1 Before the time of Christ, they were secured from alteraticn by 
their being generally known,—by the jealousy of the Samaritany 
—by the public reading on Sabbath,—by Chaldee Paraphrase, 
and the Greek version. 

2. After the birth of Christ, by mutual jealousy of Jews and Chris- 
tians, and the general diffusion of the books. 

8. All this is confirmed by the agreement of the manuscripts in all 
important respects. (P. 138.) 

(2.) As to New Testament. 

1. From their contents. Same facts and doctrines. 

2. Impossibility of corruption because of general knowledge of the 
books, and mutual restraints of orthodox and heretics, Eastern 
and Western churches. 

8. From the agreement of the manuscripts. 

4. From the agreement of ancient versions and quotations. 


(C.) (Chap. xiv.) CREDIBILITY OF THE TESTIMONY OF THE SACRED 
WRITERS. 

(1.) That they were persons of virtuous and sober character was never 
denied. 

(2.) They were in circumstances to know the truth of what they relate. 
They could not be deceived, for instance, as to the feeding of the 
four thousand, gift of tongues, &c. 

(3.) They had no interest in making good the story. Their interests all 
lay in the opposite direction. 

(4.) Their account is circumstantial, and given in a learned age, when its 
falsity might easily have been detected. 


({1.) After these preliminaries, establishing the genuineness and authenticity of 
the books, it remains now to present the argument. 
(A.) From MirAc es. (P. 146.) 
(1.) (Chap. xv.) Their reality proved. 
(a.) Definition of a true miracle. 


(b.) Claims of Scriptural miracles to be considered ¢rue, illus. 
trated— 


1. As to those of Moses. Darkness, destruction of first-born, passage 
of Red Sea, falling of manna. 
« As to those of Christ. Illustrated especially by the greatest 
miracle, the RESURRECTION, in regard to which it is shown, 
a. That Christ was really dead. 


EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 1x 


b. That the body was missing. That 

c. Every attempt to account for (b,) except on the supposition of 
a resurrection, is asurd, and 

d. That the story was confirmed by the subsequent testimony and 

- conduct of the disciples. 

(2.) (Chap. xvi.) Objections answered. 
(a.) It is asserted that miracles have been wrought in support of other 
doctrines. 

L On the authority of Scripture. For, it is said, 

(1.) That Scripture gives instances of such: e. g., of magicians in 
opposition to Moses, and the raising of Samuel by the witch 
of Endor, etc. In reply to this, : 

1. As to the feats of the magicians, it is to be noticed, 1. That 
they were professed wonder-workers ; 2. That they could 
imitate but three of Moses’ miracles; 3. That their works 
were wrought to maintain the equality of their idols with 
Jehovah. 'Two explanations are given. 

1. Some suppose these were exercises of legerdemain. 

2. Our author admits a supernatural evil agency: which ts 
not unreasonable, inasmuch as the design was, not tc 
disprove the divinity of Jehovah, but to maintain their 
own authority. 

2. As to the witch of Endor, and Satan’s bear>, our Lord 
through the air:—-Granting these events to have been 
miraculous, it cannot be shown that they were wrought in 
opposition to a divine mission. 

(2.) That Scripture assumes the possibility of such. Deut. xiii, 1 
Matt. xxiv, 24; 2 Thess. ii, 8, 9. As to this, 

1. Notice the nature and work of Satan.—Six points. 

2. Observe the limitations of the power of evil spirits, four points : 
(1.) No work of creation. (2.) No power of life and 
death. (3.) No knowledge of future events. (4.) No 
certain knowledge of the thoughts of men. 

3. Apply these considerations to show 

(1.) That no real miracle can be performed in opposition to 
the truth. Illustrated, 

(1.) By the case of the Egyptian magi. 
(2.) By that of false Christs, &c. 

(2.) Nor any prophecy be uttered implying certain knowledge 
of future events: though great sagacity may be exhibited. 

N. B. No evidence recorded in favour of falsehood that might 
not readily be refuted on the spot by counter evidence. 

IL On the authority of profane writers. (P. 168.) Miracles of Aris 
teas, Pythagoras, Alexander, Vespasian, Apollonius Tyanenus, 
and the Romish Church. To this we reply, 

(a.) These pretended miracles are all deficient in evidence. 


Vout. I.—B. 


ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


(b.) They are insulated and destitute of any reasonable object. 
while the miracles of Scripture combine for the establishment 
of one system. 


(B.) From rpropuecy. (P. 175.) 
(1.) (Chap. xvii.) Their reality proved. 
(a.) Preliminary considerations. 

1. The instances are numerous. 

2. Many have clearly come to pass. 

8. They all tend to one great end. 

4. This last characteristic is peculiar to the Scripture prophecies. 

5. There is no obscurity in them that can be a just ground for 
cavil. 

6. The double sense of prophecy, so far from being an objection, is a 
confirmation of the infinite wisdom that inspired it. 

(b.) Examples of such predictions. (P. 181, et seq.) 

1. The prediction to Adam of the protracted conflict between the serpent 
and the seed of the woman, with the ultimate triumph of the 
latter. 

2. Jacob’s prediction respecting the time when Shiloh should come. 

3. Predictions respecting the Jewish nation, viz.:—(1.) Their apos- 
tacies. (2.) Their punishments. (3.) Their restoration. 

4. Predictions respecting the Messiah. 

(1.) Upward of one hundred distinct predictions as to his birth, 
: life, sufferings, death, and resurrection. 
(2.) Wonderful prophecy, especially, contained in Isaiah iii. 
(2.) (Chap. xviii.) Objections answered. 
(a.) It is objected to some of the prophecies, that they were written after 
the event. 
This cannot be sustained: illustrated as to Isaiah and Daniel. 
(b.) The Scripture prophecies are compared to the heathen oracles. 
Let us take the Delphic oracle for an example. Of this we say, 
1. None of its predictions ever went deep into futurity. 
2. Its responses were ambiguous. 
8. Venal and servile, it was easily corrupted. None of which can 
be alleged of Scripture prophecies. 
(c.) The character of the prophets is aspersed. 

E. g., Balaam, and Jewish false prophets. Singular proceeding to 
condemn the true on account of the false, who were not received 
by the Jews themselves. 

(d.) It is asserted that some of the prophecies have failed. 

1. Promise to Abraham. Ans. But this was fulfilled in the time of 
David and Solomon. 

2. Promise of great wealth and dominion to the Jews. (Voltaire.) 
Ans. Civil blessings promised conditionally, and spiritual bless- 
ings generally predicted under figures of speech. 


= 





INTERNAL EVIDENCE. xi 


8. Prediction of Isaiah to Ahaz. Ans. This was fulfilled. 

4. Prophecy of Jeremiah to Zedekiah. Ans. This was fulfilled in 
all particulars, as far as we know. 

5. That of Ezekiel respecting the desolation of Egypt. Ans. We know 
not that it has not been fulfilled: and the very same prophecy 
contains a prediction that has been remarkably accomplish- 
ed. (P. 202.) 

(e.) Sundry actions of the prophets have been ridiculed. Ans. ‘They 
were appropriate to the occasions, and in accordance with primi 
tive and oriental usage. 


II INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 


Notice two preliminaries. 
(1.) The distinction between rational and authenticating evidence. 
(2.) Those doctrines which have no rational evidence do not suffer in au 
thority on that account. 


We have now to consider, 
’ A.) THe EXCELLENCE AND BENEFICIAL TENDENCY OF THE DOCTRINES 

OF SCRIPTURE. (P. 204.) Among which are 

a.) The existence of God—his character, attributes, &c. 
b.) The moral condition of man: viz. 

1, The race is absolutely vicious. 

2. And vicious in consequence of a moral taint in their nature: for the 
evil is not to be accounted for by the influence of education or ez- 
ample, as some vainly say. 

3. The divine government, in regard to man, is of a mized character. 

ce.) The atonement. Doctrine much objected to, as being deficient in ra- 
tional evidence. The Christian doctrine of atonement is grounded on 

1. Future punishment, which is 

2. Unlimited: for which two arguments may be assigned. (1.) Present 
analogies. (2.) Doctrine of immortality. 

8. The problem of the possibility of pardon, without such a relaxation of 
the divine government as would effectually nullify it, can only be 
solved by this great doctrine. Repentance and reformation are not 
only unavailing, but would, from the nature of the case, be imprac- 
ticable. Illustration, Zaleucus. 

d.) Doctrine of the influence of the Holy Spirit. 

1. No physical objection to this doctrine. 

2.No moral objection. Free agency not destroyed. 

8 It is adapted to the moral destitution of man. 

4. It presents an affecting view of the divine character. 

5. It elevates our aspirations, and encourages us to the performance of the 
most difficult duties. 

This branch of the internal evidence may be properly closed by noticing 


X11 ANALYSIS GF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


e.) The wonderful agreement in doctrine among the writers, though numer 
ous, and writing at different periods. 


(B.) Mora TENDENCY OF THE SCRIPTURES. (Pp. 225-30.) 
a.) It has been asserted that the Bible has an immoral tendency, because tt 


records the failings of some of its leading characters! Answered :— 
_ These frailties are always recorded for admonition; illustrated by 
David’s case. 
N. B. The moral characters of Blount, Tyndal, Hobbes, Voltaire, &c., 
not very honourable to the cause which they espouse. 
b.) Compare pagan morality with that of the Scriptures. 
1. Great moral qualities attributed to the divine Being were abstract with 
them; but in Christ they are all exemplified. 
2. No authority for moral rules among Pagans. 
. Their apprehension of moral principles was indistinct. 
4. The same writers among heathen are of a lower grade than among 
Christians. (P. 229.) 
5. Beauty and symmetry of the Christian morals. Wesley. Taylor. 
(C.) STYLE AND MANNER OF THE SACRED WRITERS (P. 230.) 
a.) Style, various, as it should be, being the productions of different indi- 
viduals, in different ages. Marsh. Michaelis. 
b.) Manner, artless and natural, possessing all the simplicity of truth. 


eo 


III COLLATERAL EVIDENCE. 


(A.) MARVELLOUS DIFFUSION OF CHRISTIANITY, especially during the first 
three centuries, confirmed by Tacitus, Pliny, Justin, Tertullian, Origen, 
until A. D. 300, when Christianity became the established religion of the 
Roman empire. (P. 232.) 

(B.) ACTUAL EFFECT PRODUCED UPON MANKIND. Idolatry. Immorality 
Infanticide. Condition of woman. 


IV. MISCELLANEOUS OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 


Preanminary remarks. (Chap. xx.) (P. 236.) 

1, Objections are often raised in great ignorance of the volume itself. 

2. Hasty theories have been constructed, which have been found or thought 
to contradict the Scriptures; thus Deism arose in the sixteenth century 
in France, and in the seventeenth in England. 

8 HerpBert, Hoppes, SHAFTESBURY, and Humk, the chief English infi- 
dels; and the great principle of error with them all, is that of Her 
bert of Cherbury, viz., “the sufficiency of our natural faculties to form 
a religion for ourselves, and to decide upon the merits of revealed truth.” 

I. Objections on moral grounds. 
1. The command to the Israelites to exterminate the Canaanites. 
Ans. It cannot be proved inconsistent with the character of God to em. 
ploy tuman agents, as well as natural, in such a work. 


MISCELLANEOUS OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. xill 


2. Law in Deuteronomy authorizing parents to accuse their children, &c. 
Ans. In fact this was a merciful regulation. 
3. Intentional offering of Isaac by Abraham. 
Ans. (1.) Abraham had no doubt of the divine command. 
(2.) He obeyed, in faith that God would raise his son. 
4. Indelicacy and immodesty have been charged upon the Scriptures. 
Ans. (1.) These sins are everywhere denounced as offensive to God. 
(2.) The passages alluded to are generally probibitions of crime. 
(3.) The simplicity of early manners is to be considered. 
Several others might be adduced, but a little skill in the languages and anti 
quities of Scripture will always clear up the main difficulties. 
al. Objections on philosophical grounds. (P. 241.) 
1. Infidels are fond of contrasting (what they call) the simplicity of the book 
of nature with the mystery of the book of God. 
Ans. (1.) Many doctrines and duties are comprehensible. 
(2.) Facts may be revealed, and yet be incomprehensible: e. g., it 
is revealed that God is omnipresent, but not how he is so, &c. 
(3.) But even in their boasted natural philosophy, revelation and 
mystery go hand in hand. The real causes of the phenomena 
named gravitation, cohesion, evaporation, &c., are unknown ; 
and even in pure mathematics, such incomprehensibles occur. 
2. From the minuteness of the earth as contrasted with the vastness of the 
material universe, infidelity argues the insignificance of man; thence 
the improbability of redemption. 
Answered, (1.) By Dr. Beatty. (2.) By Granville Penn. 
8. Objections are brought against the Mosaic chronology from two sources: 
(1.) The chronology of ancient nations. 
(2.) The structure of the earth. 

As to the (1) class, these ancient chronologies are rapidly losing cha- 
racter, especially the Hindoo and Chinese, which make the greatest 
pretensions to antiquity. No reliance whatever is placed upon 
them. ' 

As to the (2) geological objection, two solutions have been offered. 

1. That the days of the Mosaic history are indefinite periods. 
2. That an indefinite time elapsed between the beginning spoken 
of in Genesis i, 1, and the work of the six days. 
To both these solutions our author objects, and prefers the views of Mr. 
Gra ville Penn. 
4. It is objected that light was created on the first day, and the sun not until 
the fourth. 
Several solutions. 
5. Objections to Mosaic account of the deluge. 
6. Objections as to number of animals taken into the ark with Noah. 


PART SECOND. 


DOCTRINES OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES 


OUTLINE. 
I. DOCTRINES RELATING TO GOD. 

(A.) Existence: (Ch. i.) 
(B.) Attributes: (Ch. ii-—vii.) 
(C.) Persons: 

(1.) Doctrine of Trinity, (Ch. viii, ix.) 

(IL) Divinity of Christ, (Ch. x-xv.) 

(IIL.) Humanity of Christ, (Ch. xvi.) 


(1V.) Personality and Deity of the Holy Ghost, (Ch. xvii.) 


Il. DOCTRINES RELATING TO MAN. 


(A.) Original sin: (Ch. xviii.) 
(B.) Redemption : 
(I.) Principles of, (Ch. xix—xxii.) 


(IL) Benefits of, (Ch. xxili-xxix.) 


I. DOCTRINES RELATING TO GOD.—(Ch. i-xvii.) 


(A. EXISTENCE OF GOD. (Ch. i.) 


(I.) Source of the idea. 
I. From the sacred writings. 
1. From the names of God as recorded in Scripture : 
2. From the actions which the Scriptures ascribe to him: 
3. From the attributes with which they invest him. 


‘I. From the sacred writings alone. (P. 267.) 

1. The language of the Christian philosophers, n regard to the Deity, is 
very different from the inconsistent and groveiling views of the sages 
of antiquity: e. g., Barrow, Pearson, Lawson, and Newton, are 
quoted. 

2. The question of man’s ability to discover the existence of a first cauce, 
cannot be determined by matter of fact. 


EXISTENCE OF GOD. xv 


8. Nor can the abstract probability of such discovery be sustained. (P. 271.) 

(1.) Uneducated man is a creature of appetite:—but he cannot be 

educated without civilization and society :—these have never ex- 

isted, and we may safely say, can never exist, without a religious 

basis: but by the hypothesis, that basis, viz., the idea of God, is 
wanting. 

(2.), (P. 273.) Clear as the argument a posteriori now appears to us, 
yet all history shows that the eternity of matter has been an impas- 
sable barrier in the way of human reasoning, unaided by revela- 
tion, in the attempt to establish a divine existence. 

(3.) (P. 274.) The doctrine of innate ideas is exploded. 


Tl.) Proofs. (Pp. 272-325.) 
I. Preliminary observations. 
(a.) On the relation of cause and effect. 

1. The principle is, that nothing exists or comes to pass without an 

_ EFFICIENT CAUSE. 

2. Hume (probably following Hobbes) objects to this principle on the 
ground, that what we suppose to be necessary connexions, in 
nature, are or may be only habitual sequences, and that we cannot 
demonstrate them to be otherwise. 

3. Answered by Dugald Stewart, who admits Hume’s doctrine indeed, 
but nullifies its evil results, by his distinction between efficient 
and physical causes. But 

4. (P. 279.) Our author supposes the true state of the case to be 

(1.) That there are efficient causes, and that the relation between 
them and their effects is necessary. 

(2.) That there are physical causes, the relation between which and 
their effects is necessary in this sense, viz., that Gop has estab- 
lished a certain order in nature, by which his own efficiency 
exerts itself. This is a very different notion from the unsatis- 
factory one of habitual sequence. 

(b.) On the distinction between argument a priori and a posteriori. Su- 
periority of the latter in this case. 


If. Proof of the existence of God. 

1. Locke’s argument. “I exist: I did not always exist : whatever begins 
to exist must have a cause: that cause must be adequate: this ade- 
quate cause is unlimited: it must be God.” 

2. Howe’s argument. The same, but more expanded, thus: 

(1) Somewhat hath existed from eternity: hence (2) must be uncaused: 
hence (3) independent: hence (4) necessary : hence (5) self-active : 
and hence (6) originally vital, and the source of all life. 


s 


III. Proof of the intelligence of God. (P. 286.) 
1. Dr. Sam. Clarke’s argument from the intelligence of man, and the 


Xvi ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


variety, order, excellence, and contrivance of things: and especially 
from the existence of motion. 
2. (P.291.) This last (viz., motion) expanded, from Howe’s Living Temple. 
8. The basis of NATURAL THEOLOGY, as found in Howe’s Living Temple, 
— Whatever exists, with the marks of wisdom and design upon it, 
had a wise and designing CAUSE.” (P. 293.) Illustrations, 
(1.) A watch presented to an observer for the first time. 
(2.) Much more, the heavenly bodies exhibit wisdom and contrivance. 
(3.) The human frame especially. 
1. The double members and their uses. 
2. The eye, with its curious optical mechanism. 
3. The spine: and, besides the frame of the body, 


C4.) Its animal functions, and those of terrestrial creatures, viz.: (Pp. 
304-306 :) 


1. Growth. 
2. Nutrition. 
3. Spontaneous motion. 
4. Sensation. 
(5.) Intellectual powers of man. (P. 806.) 
4. The instances of the watch, the eye, the double organs, and the spine 


largely illustrated by quotations from Paley’s Natural ‘Theology. 
(Pp. 307-322.) 


IV. Proof of the personality of God. (P. 322-325.) 


II.) Remarks. 


I. Absurdity of Atheism. 
1. As to the eternity of the world. 
2. As to the eternity of unorganized matter. 
3. Some modern schemes of Atheism, viz.: 
(1.) Buffon’s organic molecules. 


(2.) ‘The system of appetencies. No other answer necessary than that 
these schemes are entirely wanting in evidence. 


II. Character of the argument a priori. (Pp. 330-335.) 

1. It is unsatisfactory, and tends to lead men away from the sure argu- 
ment, pointed out by Scripture, from “the things which do appear.” 

2. The existence itself of a supreme Being can hardly be shown by this 
method. Indeed, even Dr. S. Clarke first proves the existence of - 
“one unchangeable and independent Being,” a posteriori. 

8. Some objections to Dr. S. Clarke’s view of the necessary existence of 

the supreme Being. 


The being of God is necessary, because it is underived; not underived 
because it is necessary. 


ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. xvii 


(B..—ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. (Ch. ii-vii.) 
§ Uniry. (Ch. ii.) 


(I.) Scriptural testimony. Deut. vi, 4; iv, 35, &c. 
1. The Scriptural notion is, that Gop is a pure simple being : so one, that 
there are no other gods: so one, that there can be no other gods. 
2. If we admit the Scriptures, we admit a Deity: if we admit one God, 
we exclude all others. 


(II.) ‘Evidence from reason. 
1. A priori argument is here unobjectionable, if logical. 
(1.) Dr. Clarke’s shown to be useless. 
(2.) Wollaston’s, Wilkins’, and Pearson’s arguments stated. 
(3.) The best argument of the kind is that from the idea of absolute 
perfection. 
2. Proofs may be derived also from the works of God. 
(1.) In the harmony of the universe we discern but one Will and one 
Intelligence, and therefore but One Being. 
(2.) Uniformity of plan in the universe, is a proof of the unity of God. 
Illustrations by Paley. (Pp. 340-342.) 


(III.) Importance of this doctrine. 
The unity of God the basis of all true religion. 


al. Sprrituayitry. (Ch. ii.) 


(I.) Scriptural testimony: “Gop is a spirit.” Similar passages abound. 
The immateriality of the divine Being is important, because of its con- 
nexion with the doctrine of the immortality of the human soul. 


(IL) Evidence from reason, both as to the spiritual nature of Gop, and the 
unthinking nature of matter. F 
1 Gop is intelligent, therefore Gop is a spiritual Being, because intelli- 
gence is not a property of matter. For 
(1.) Unorganized matter is certainly unintelligent, hence intelligence 
cannot be an essential property of matter; but it is an essential 
attribute of Deity, hence the Deity cannot be material. 
(2.) Nor is intelligence the result of material organization, for 

1. Vegetables are unintelligent. 

2. Were intellect constantly conjoined with animal organization, we 
could deny the necessity of such connexion, but we deny this 
supposed constant connexion, and thus take away the basis of 
Priestley’s argument. This denial is based upon the following: 

a.) The organization of the human frame is often perfect after 
death. But dead men do not think. 

b.) The organism of Adam’s body was complete before he became 
a “ living soul.” 


XViil ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


(3.) But we may be told, that the subject supposed in the argument is 
a lwing organized being. This introduces a new element, viz., 
life, into the argument; but 

1. Vegetables live, and yet do not think. 

2. The organic life of Bichat is common to animals and vegetables. 

8. The animal life is defined by Bichat, Lawrence, and even by Cu- 
vier, to be the “sum total of its functions of a certain class.” 
Absurdity of this shown by quotations from Rennell and 
Barclay. 

(4.) Further proofs that matter is incapable of thought, drawn from 
its essential properties of extension, impenetrability, divisibility, &c., 
none of which belong to thought. 

(5.) The notions, matter and mind, are merely relative. Reid. Stewart. 
Immateriality of brutes not denied. 


HL Eternity. (Ch. iii.) 


1. Scriptural notion, God had no beginning and shall have no end: “ From 
everlasting to everlasting,” &c. 

2. These representations evidently convey something more than the mere 
idea of infinite duration. Life is essential to Gop: he lives by virtue 
of his own nature, which can be said of him alone. 

3. Some obscure notions of the eternity prevailed among the heathens, pro- 
bably derived from the Jewish Scriptures. 

4. Doctrine of the Eternal Now repudiated. 

(1.) Duration, as applied to Gop, is an extension of the same idea, as 
applied to ourselves. 

(2.) The objection to this, (viz., that it would argue imperfection,) arises 
from the confounding succession in the duration with change in the 
substance. 

(3.) If it be said that succession is only an artificial method of conceiving 
or measuring duration, it may be answered, that leagues measure the 
ocean, but leagues are not the ocean, though both leagues and the 
ocean may actually exist. 


TV. OMNIPOTENCE. (Ch. iii.) 


(I.) Scriptural testimony. 
1. Reasons why this attribute is so much dwelt upon by the sacred writen 
viz., to secure the obedience, worship, and confidence of man. 

2. Mode of its exhibition in the Scriptures. 
(a.) By the fact of creation. 
(b.) By the vastness and variety of the works of God. 
(c.) By the ease with which he is said to create and uphold all things. 
(d.) By the terrible descriptions given of the divine power. 
(e.) By the subjection of all intelligent beings to his will. 

8. The power of all these descriptions lies in their truth. 


ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. xix 


4. The works of God manifestations, but not the measure, of his omnipo- 
tence. 


(II.) Only limitation to the divine power: no working of contradictions, or 
impossibilities. 


V. OMNIPRESENCE. (Ch. iii.) 


1. Scriptural testimony. 

2. Heathen notions of omnipresence : some striking, but all defective. 

3. Similar errors pervade the infidel philosophy of modern times. 

4, The Scriptural phrases in which this doctrine is conveyed, must be taken 
in their common-sense acceptation. 

5. Illustrations of this doctrine from the material world, quoted from Amory 
and Paley. 

6. The a priori argument stated. 

7. The manner in which God is everywhere present, incomprehensible. - 


VI. OmNIscIENCE. (Ch. iv.) 


(1.) Scriptural statement of the doctrine. 
1. Direct texts: “ Great is the Lord, his understanding is INFINITE,” &c. 
2. Argument in Psalm xciv, from the communication of knowledge to 
men, illustrated by a quotation from Tillotson. 
8. The sacred writers refer to the works of God for confirmation. 


(IL) The Pagans had many fine sentiments in regard to the divine omni- 
science, but the moral of the doctrine was wanting. 


(IIL) The doctrine of foreknowledge examined. Unquestionably it is,a 
Scriptural doctrine ; but from its difficulty, &c., three theories have 
arisen :— 

(1.) Theory of Chevalier Ramsay. “It is a matter of choice in God, to 
think of finite ideas.” Answer to this theory, 

- 1. God’s omnipotence is an infinite capacity, but omniscience actually 

comprehends all things that are or can be. 

2. Choice implies a reason, and that implies knowledge of the things 
rejected. : 

8. Some contingent actions have been foreknown by God, and indeed 
foretold by his prophets. 

(2.) Theory,—‘“ That prescience of contingent events implies a contradic- 
tion, hence the absence of such prescience is no dishonour to God.” 
Answer, 

(a.) This theory is defective so long as the Scriptures are allowed to 
contain prophecies of rewardable and punishable actions, such as 
1. The long course of events connected with the destruction of 
Babylon. , 
2. The contingencies involved in the destruction of Jerusalem. 


xx ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


(b.) The principle, that “ certain prescience destroys contingency,” can- 
not be sustained, 1.) The mainer of the divine prescience is in- 
deed incomprehensible, but the fact is undeniably asserted in Serip- 
ture; but 2.) The principle itself is founded upon a sophism, which 
lies in supposing that contingency and certainty are opposed to each 
other: while in fact they are not; but contingency and necessity. 
It is knowledge, and not influence. Opinions of Dr. Sam. Clarke, 
Dr. Copleston, and Curcelleus. 

(8.) Theory,—“ That the foreknowledge of God must be supposed ‘o 
differ so much from anything of the kind in ourselves, that no argu- 
ment respecting it can be grounded on our imperfect notions :’— 
maintained by Archbishop King and Dr. Copleston. Objections to 
this theory are, 

(a.) The difficulty is shifted, not taken away. 

(b.) These notions are dangerous:—for if, in the language of Arch- 
bishop King, “ we can have no proper notion of the faculties we 
ascribe to the divine Being,” we have no proper revelation of the 
divine character at all. But, to examine more minutely, we say 
that this theory introduces difficulties, instead of removing them; 
and 

1. It assumes that our notions of God are framed from the results of 
our observation of his works, &c., which is not the case ;—they 
are derived from express revelation. 

2. We may form a true notion, though not an adequate one, ‘of the 
divine perfections. To be incomprehensible is not to be unintel- 
ligible. 

8. This theory assumes that the nature of God is essentially different 
from the spiritual nature of man, which is not the doctrine of 

. Scripture. 

4, Wherever the language of Scripture is metaphorical, it is distinctly 
so;—so that the argument drawn from the ascription of bodily 
functions, (p. 390,) and even of human passions, (p. 892,) to 
the divine Being, fails when applied to intellectual and moral 
powers. 

(c.) We say then, lastly, (p.396,) that there is no incongruity between 
divine prescience and human freedom, unless influence be super- 
added to necessitate the human will, Quotation from Edwards. 


VII. Immutapiity. (Ch. v.) 
(L) Scriptural statement. ‘“ Of old thou hast laid,” &c. “Iam the Lora, 
I change not.” With parallel passages. 


(1f.) Confirmations from observation. 
1. The stability of the general order of nature. 
2. The moral government of God, and 


(111.) This immutability is not temporary, but a sovereign, essential per 


ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. XXI 


fection of the Deity, as we learn from Scripture. He changes not, 
because he is “‘ the Lord.” 


(1V.) The divine immutability is not contradicted, but confirmed, by the 
variety of his operations, regards, and affections, toward the same crea- 
tures ender different circumstances. 


(V.) Cautions are necessary against certain speculations on the divine im- 
mutability—such as, that there are no emotions and no succession of 
ideas with God,—or, according to Ridgely, that “ God’s knowledge is 
independent of the object known.” 

1. In these, the distinction between things possible and things actual is 
overlooked. 

2. And also the distinction between God’s knowledge of all possible things, 
and of those things to which he determined, before the creation, to 
give actual existence. 


(VI.) The liberty of God is closely allied to his immutability, and a proper 
idea of this will correct the false notions above alluded to. 


VIII. Wispom. (Ch. v.) 
(I1.) The Scriptures testify abundantly to the nice application of God’s 
knowledge to secure his own ends. 


(IL) A few of the characters of the divine wisdom, as thus exhibited. 
1. It acts for worthy ends. 
2. Its means are simple: great effects from few elements. | 
3. Variety of equally perfect operation: e.g. (1.) Variety of form. (2.) 
Variety of magnitude. 
. The connexion and dependence of the works of God. 
. The means by which offending men are reconciled to God,—the most 
eminent manifestations of the wisdom of God. 


o 


[X. Goopness. (Ch. vi.) 


(1.) Scriptural testimony. 
1. It is goodness of nature, an essential perfection of the divine character. 


2. It is efficient and inexhaustible :—it “ endureth forever.” 

3. The divine Being takes pleasure in the exercise of it :—he “ delights in 
mercy.” 

4. Nothing, :apable of happiness, comes from his hand, except in circum- 
stances of positive felicity. 

(II.) Evidence from the natural and moral world. 

(1.) The dark side. 1.) Positive evils on the globe: volcanoes, sterifity, 
&e. 2.) Diseases and sufferings of the human race. 3.) Sufferings 
and deat! of animals. 

(2.) The bright side. 1.) Design of every contrivance essentially benefi- 
cial: e. g., teeth are contrived to cat, not to ache. But to this may 


xxu ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


be objected (1) venomous animals, and (2) animals preying upon one 
another.” 

As to (1.) So far as the animal itself is concerned, the contrivance 
is good. 

As to (2.) The following points are to be considered. 1.) Immor- 
tality on earth is out of the question. 2.) Is not death in this 
way better than decay? 3.) The system isthe spring of motion 
and activity to brutes. 

The bright side. 2.) The happiness of animal existence. 3.) Many 
alleviations of positive evils. 4.) Many ills are chargeable upon 
man’s own misconduct. Consider an individual case,—the .good 
circumstances about him far counterbalance all other. 

(3.) The theory of optimism: viz., that the present system is the best 
which the nature of things out admit. 

1. The very principle of this hypothesis implies an unworthy notion of 
God: considering it (1) as to natural, (2) as to moral evils. 

2. We deny, then, that ‘ whatever is, is best.” We can not only con- 
ceive a better state of things, but can show that the evils of the 
present state do not necessarily exist. Sin has entered into the 
world, and God is just, as well as good. 

8. The state of the world exactly answers to the Scriptural repre- 
sentations of the relations between man and God. Illustrated by 
quotations from Gisborne, 1.) As to the actual appearance of the 
globe. 2.) By reference to the general deluge. 3.) By the human 
frame. 4.) By the occupations of man—farmers—shepherds—mi- 
ners—manufacturers—merchants. 


(III.) The origin of evil. (P. 428.) There are four leading opinions. 

1 Necessity. 2. The Manichean doctrine of duality. 3. The doctrine 
that God is the author of sin. And 4. That evil is the result of the 
abuse of moral freedom. 

1. Refutes itself. 2. Is now given up. 3. Found among the most un- 
guarded Calvinistic writers, but now generally abandoned. 4. Is 
the opinion generally adopted, and agrees with the Scriptura’ 
statement of the creation and fall of man. 


(IV.) The mercy of God is a mode of his goodness. 


X Houryess. (Ch. vii.) 
Preliminary. 1. It is clear that Gop “loveth righteousness and hateth 
iniquity.” 
2. And this from some essential principle of his nature. This principle 
we call holiness, which exhibits itself in two great branches, viz. :— 


(L) Justice, 1. Character of, when particular, (not universal.) 
(a.) Legislative, which determines man’s duty and binds him to its per 
formance. 


PERSONS OF THE GODHEAD. xxiii 


(b.) Judicial or distributive, which respects rewards and punishments; 
and is either 1) premiative, sr 2) vindictive, but always impartial. 
2. Reconciled with the divine admain:stration. 
(a.) By the fact that man is under a dispensation of mercy. 
(b) By the-doctrine of general judgment, which is grounded on that 
of redemption. 
3 Inferences. 
(a.) That great offenders may prosper in this life, without impeachment 
of God’s government. 
(b.) That God’s children may be afflicted and oppressed. 
(c.) That an administration of grace may be apparently unequal with- 
out injustice. But, 
(d.) As nations have no posthumous existence, national rewards and 
punishments have been in all ages visible and striking. 


(il.) Trurs, which in Scripture is contemplated under the two great 
branches of veracity and faithfulness. 
1. His veracity regards his word. No deception here. 
2. His faithfulness regards his engagements, which never fail. 
A few general ascriptions of excellence may here be noticed. 1.) God 
is perfect. 2.) God is all-sufficient. 3.) God is unsearcha’le. Sup- 
port each by Scriptural passages. 


(C.—PERSONS OF THE GODHEAD. 


I.) DocTRINE OF THE TRINITY. (Ch. viii, ix.) 


I. Preliminary remarks and explanations. 

1. This doctrine cannot be demonstrated either a priori or a posteriori 
Attempts of Poiret, Kidd, &c., noticed. It rests entirely on Scripture. 

2. Pretensions to explain this doctrine are highly objectionable. 

8. Perhaps it may be admitted that types and symbols of the mystery of 
the trinity are to be found in natural objects. 

4, Explanation of the term person: 1.) In ordinary language. 2.) Ina 
strict philosophical sense. It is not applied in the latter sense to the 
divine Being; but the distinct persons are represented as having a 
common foundation in one being: the manner of the union being in- 
comprehensible. Objection to the term, as not being Scriptural, 
answered. 

5. Leading differences of opinion among the orthodox. Howe, Water- 
land, Pearson, Bull. 


as. Importance of the doctrine stated, (I.) Chiefly in answer to Dr. Priestley 
1. The knowledge of Gop is fundamental to religion. 
2. Dr. P. allows its necessity “to explain some particular texts.” But 
we can show that these “texts” comprehend a large portion of 
Scripture. 


XXIV ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


3 Our. iews of God, as the object of our worship, are affected. 
$ Dr. P. objects, “ that no fact in nature, nor purpose in morals, requires 
this doctrine.” 

1.) As to the natural world, (1.) It is adapted to the scheme of orthodox 
Christianity, and not to Socinianism, which does not admit of ree 
demption. (2.) The duration of the natural world, is another re- 
lation to theology. It was made for Christ. 

2.) As to morals. (1.) Morals are conformity to a divine law, which 
must take its character of its Author. (2.) Faith is ohedieace to 
command, and therefore part of morals. 


(iI.) Importance of this doctrine, on broader grounds. 
1. Our love to God, which is the substance of religion, is essentially af- 
fected by our views of this doctrine. 
2. In other equally essential views, the denial of Christ’s divinity essen- 
tially alters the Christian scheme, viz. 
1.) The doctrine of atonement is denied by Socinians, though inconsis 
tently admitted by Arians. 
2.) Views of the evil of sin are essentially modified. 
8.) The character of Christian experience essentially changed, as to 
repentance, faith, prayer, love, &c. 
4.) The religious affections of hope, trust, joy, &c., are all interfered 
with. 
5.) The language of the Church of Christ must be altered and brought 
down to these views. 
6.) The doctrine of divine agency must be changed. 
8. The denial of the doctrine of the trinity affects the credit of the Holy 
Scriptures ; for if this doctrine be not contained in them, their ten- 
dency to mislead is obvious. 


III. Difficulties are said to attend the reception of this doctrine. But, 
1. Mere difficulty in conceiving of what is proper to God, forms no 
objection. 
2. No contradiction is implied in this great doctrine. 
3. The Arian and Socinian hypotheses do not relieve us from difficulties. 


IV Scripture testimony. (Ch. ix.) 

Preliminary. Every argument in favour of the trinity flows from the 
principle of the absolute uN1Ty of God, which is laid down in the 
Scriptures with the utmost solemnity, and guarded with the utmost 
care by precepts, threatenings, and promises. But in examining 
what the Scriptures teach concerning this ONE Gop, we find that, 

A. The very names of God have plural forms, and are connected with 
plural modes of speech. (P. 467.) 

Examples: Deuteronomy vi, 4; Aleim; Adonim, &c. 

B. Three persons, and three ONLY, are spoken of in Scripture under devthe 

titles. Example 


PERSONS OF THE GODHEAD. Xxv 


1. Solemn form of Jewish benediction. Num. vi, 24-27. . 

2. The vision of Isaiah, with the allusions to it by St. John and St. Paul 
in the New Testament. (Pp. 470, 471.) 

8. Various passages in the New Testament might be cited—in which 
sometimes two, sometimes three, but never more than three, persons 
are spoken of. 1 John v, 7, is laid out of the argument, as un- 
certain. | 

C. The great proof on which the doctrine rests :—the multiplied instances 
in which ¢wo persons are spoken of, as associated with God in his 
perfections. (P. 473.) 

1. The outline of Scriptural testimony is given, as to the Son. 

2. The same as to the SprRIv. 

Therefore, as the Scriptures uniformly declare but oNE Gop, and yet do 
throughout declare three persons DIVINE,—we harmonize these apparently op- 
posite doctrines in the proposition—THE THREE PERSONS ARE ONE GOD 
These views are maintained in the orthodox church, and are chargeable with 
no greater mystery than is assignable to the Scriptures. We do not give ur 
the unity of God. The Socinian unity is a unity of one: ours is a unity of three. 


J.) Divinity or Curist, (Ch. x-xv,) proved, 


A. By HIS PRE-EXISTENCE, ; (Ch. x.) 
B. BECAUSE HE WAS THE JEHOVAH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT, (Ch. xi.) 
C. BECAUSE DIVINE TITLES ARE ASCRIBED TO HIM, (Ch. xii.) 
D. BECAUSE DIVINE ATTRIBUTES BELONG TO HIM, (Ch. xiii.) 
E. BECAUSE DIVINE ACTS ARE ASCRIBED TO HIM, (Ch. xiv.) 
F. BECAUSE DIVINE WORSHIP IS PAID TO HIM, (Ch. xv.) 


A. PRE-EXISTENCE OF CuristT. (Ch. x.) 


The pre-existence of Christ, if established, though it does not affect the 
Arian, destroys the Socinian hypothesis: hence both ancient and 
modern Socinians have bent all arts of interpretation against those 
passages which expressly declare it, of which the following are 
examples :— 

1. Johni, 15: “‘ He that cometh after me is preferred before me, for he 
was before me.” ‘The Socinians interpret the last clause in the 
sense of dignity, and not of time. But John uses the same phrase 
elsewhere in regard to priority of time. Ifthe last referred to the 
dignity of Christ, it would have been eort, not 7v,—he is, not 
he was. 

2. The passages which express that Christ came down from heaven. 

(1.) The early Socinians supposed that Christ was translated to 
heaven after his birth. Unsupported by Scripture. 

(2.) The modern Socinians conveniently resolve the whole inte 
figure :—1. Ascending into heaven. 2. Coming down from heaven 

8. John vi, 62: “‘ What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend 
where he was before ?” 


Vou, I.—C. 


XVI 


ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


4, The phrase, to “be sent from God.” 

5. John viii, 58: “ Before Abraham was, I am.” 

6. John xvii, 5: “ The glory which I had with thee before the world was.” 

It has thus been shown that Christ had an existence previous to his in- 
carnation, and previous to the very foundation of the world. 


B. Jesus CHrisT THE JEHOVAH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. (Ch. x1.) 


In the Old Testament we cannot fail to notice the frequent supernat.aai 
appearances to the ancient patriarchs and prophets. The facts can- 


not 


be disputed ; and in order to show their bearing upon the ques- 


tion of the divinity of Christ, we have three propositions to establish, 


Viz. : 


I. The person who made these appearances was truly a DIVINE PERSON. 
1. Proof. He bears the names of the divine Being, and was the 


object of worship to the Israelites. (1.) Hagar in the wilderness. 
(2.) Abraham in the plains of Mamre. (3.) Isaac and Jacob. 
(4.) The same Jehovah visible to Moses. The same JEHOVAH 
attended the Israelites. 


2. Objections. (1.) This personage is called “the Angel of the 


Lord.” Ans. Angel is a designation of office, not of nature. 
The collation of a few passages will show that Jenova and° 
the Angel of the Lord, in this eminent sense, were the same 
person. (2.) The Arian hypothesis is, that the appearing angel 
was Christ personating the Deity. Shown to be untenable. 
(3.) The Socinian notion is the marvellous doctrine of occasional 
personality, to use Priestley’s term. Mysterious and absurd 
enough. 


II. This divine person was Not God the Father. 
1. The argument from the passage, “No man hath seen God,” &c. 


is plausible, but cannot be depended upon. 


2. The real argument is from the appelation angel. 
(I. This divine person was the promised Messiah, and sonsequeyy 
Jesus CHRIST. 


a 


On 


Scriptural proof. 


1. Jeremiah asserts that the new covenant was to be made by the 


same person who made the old: “ Behold the days come,” &c. 
Malachi’s striking prediction, ‘‘ Behold I will send my messenger,” 
&c. This prophecy is expressly applied to Christ, by St. Mark. 


. “The voice of him that crieth,” &c. Here the application of the 


prophecy was expressly made to our Lord, by the Baptist. 


. “ Behold a virgin shall conceive,” &e. ‘ Unto us a child is born.” 
. Psalm Ixviii is applied by St. Paul to Christ. 
. Christ is represented by St. Peter, as preaching by his Spirit 


in the days of Noah. 


. St. Paul, 1 Cor., “ Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them 


also tempted.” 


PERSONS OF THE GODHEAD. Xxvil 


8. Heb. xii, 25, 26, “ See that ye refuse not him that speaketh.” 

(2.) Confirmation by the testimony of the fathers, viz. :—Justin 
Martyr, Ireneus, Tertullian, Clemens, Origen, Theophilus, 
Cyprian, Hilary, and Basil. 

(3.) Two objections to this doctrine from Scripture are easily answered. 

1 “God who at sundry times,” &. Ans. We do allow the oc- 
casional manifestation of the Father to be recorded in the 
Old Testament. 

2. “If the word spoken by angels,” &c. Here the apostle refers to 
the judicial law which was given through angels. They 
were not the authors of the law, but the medium of its com- 
munication to men. 


4j DIVINE TITLES ASCRIBED TO CHRIST. (Ch. xii.) 


If the titles given to Christ in the Scriptures are such as can designate a 
divine Being, then is Christ divine, otherwise the Scriptures deceive. 

I. The title JEHovanH. 

Instances of this have already been given, and indeed Socinians 
admit the fact by their attempts to explain it away :—thus Dr. 
Priestley asserts that the name JEHOVAH is sometimes given to 
places. Miserable pretence. Force of the argument distinctly 
stated. (P. 507.) 

IL The title Lorp, (Kvpcoc,) which is applied to Christ in the New 
Testament, is in its highest sense universally allowed to belong to 
Gop: and we can show that it is applied to Christ in this highest 
sense. 

1. Both by the LXX. and the writers of the New Testament, it 1s 
the term by which the name JEHOVAH is translated. (P. 508.) 

2. When the title is not employed in the New Testament to render 
the name Jehovah, it is still manifest, by the context, that the 
writers considered and used it asa divine title. (P. 510.) 

Til. The title Gop. It is admitted even by Socinians, that Jesus 
Christ is called God. We have then to show | 

1. That in its highest sense, the term GoD involves the notion of abso- 
lute divinity. Sir I. Newton and Dr. 8S. Clarke consider it a 
relative term, importing, strictly, nothing more than dominion. 

Ans. (1.) By Dr. Waterland. (2.) By Dr. Randolph. 
2. That the term is found used of Christ in this highest sense. (P.514.) 
(1.) Matt. i, 23, “Emanur~t—God with us.” The Socinians ob- 
ject to this passage, 1.) That it is of doubtful authority; but 
this objection rests on (confessedly) a narrow foundation. 
2.) That the divinity of Christ can no more be argued from 
the name EMANUEL, than the divinity of Eli, whose name 
signifies “my God.” But this was the common name of Eli; 
not so Emanuel, which was a descriptive title, given by reve 
lation. 


IV 


M 


ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


(2.) Luke i, 16, 17: And many of the children of Israel shall he 
turn to the Lorp-THEIR Gop,” &c. 

(3.) John i, 1: “ In the beginning was the Word, and the Worp 
was with God, and the Word was God,” &c. 1.) The Logos 
in this passage is called God, in the highest sense. Three 
reasons. 2.) Criticism on the Greek article, annexed by Dr. 
Middleton. 3.) Socinians assert that yivowa: never signifies 
to create. Ans. It is thus used in the following passages: 
Heb. iv, 3; Heb. xi, 3; James iii, 9. 4.) They.translate the 
passage also, “ All things were made for him.” This inter- 
pretation effectually destroys the other. But dvd, with a geni- 
tive, denotes not the final but the efficient cause. 

(4.) John xx, 28: “Thomas answered . . . my Lord and my 
God.” Socinians make this a mere ejaculation ! 

(5.) Titus ii, 13: “Looking for that blessed hope . . . great 
God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.” 

(6.) Heb. i, 8: “ But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, 
is forever and ever.” ‘Two Socinian objections answered. 

(7.) 1 John v, 20: “ This is the true God, and eternal life.” 

(8.) Rom. ix, 5: “ Whose are the fathers . . . God blessed 
forever.” 1.) Four points to be noted in regard to this text. 
2.) All attempts to weaken the force of this powerful passage 
have failed. f 

The title “‘ Kine or Israrw.” The writers of the New Testament 
could not use this appellation in a lower sense than that which it 
holds in the Old Testament: it is sufficient to show that it was un- 
derstood by the Jews to imply divinity. 1.) Nathanael’s exclama- 
tion, and 2.) The expressions of the revilers at the crucifixion, 
are sufficient proofs of this. 


V_ The title “Son or Gon,” demands a larger notice, inasmuch as 


/ 


Socinians restrain its significance to the mere humanity of Christ ; 
and many who hesitate not to admit the divinity of Christ, coin- 
cide with the Socinians as to the Sonship. This subject is treated 
(pp. 528-562) as follows :— 


The fact is not disputed, that the title Son of God was applied to Christ 


The question then is, what this title imported. One opinion is, 
(1.) That the title was assumed by Christ because of his miraculous 
conception. But 

1. Our Lord always permitted the Jews to consider him the 
son of Joseph. 

2. When arguing with the Jews, expressly to establish that od 
was his Father, Christ made no reference to the miraculous 
conception. 

8. Nathanael knew not but Christ was son of Joseph, yet called 
him * The Son of God, and the King of Israel.” 

4. The confession of Peter, “ Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 


PERSONS OF THE GODHEAD. xxix 


living God,” was made without reference to the miraculous 
conception ; and probably before that fact was made known 
to the apostles. | 

‘TI.) Another opinion is, that the title, “Son or Gop,” was sim- 
ply an appellation of Messiah,—an official, not a personal 
designation. But the evangelical history fully refutes this 
notion, by showing that the Jews regarded the title “Son or 
Gop” as necessarily involving a claim to divinity, but did 
not so regard ‘“‘ Mrssi1au.” 

(IIL) (P. 531.) In the Old Testament we find that the title, “Son 
of God,” was a personal designation ; that the Sonship was es- 
sential, but the Messiahship accidental. 

1. Psa. ii: “ Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.” 
(1.) This cannot be interpreted with reference to the mi- 
raculous conception. (2.) Nor with reference to the resur- 
rection ; for 1.) Christ was asserted to be the “ beloved Son,” 
before his resurrection; and 2.) Paul, in the Epistle to the 
Romans, tells us that the resurrection of Christ was the 
declaration of his Sonship, not the ground of it. Argument 
corroborated by a quotation from Witsius. 

2. Proverbs viii, 22. Solomon introduces the personal wisdom of 
God, under the same relation of a Son. 

The ancient Jewish writers speak of the generation of “ Wisdom,” 
and by that term mean “ the Word.” 

3. Micah v, 2: “ But thou, Bethlehem Ephrata,” &c. This pas- 
sage carefully distinguishes the human nature from the 
eternal generation :—as two goings forth are spoken of, 1.) 
A natural one, “ from Bethlehem to Judah;” 2.) Another 
and higher, “ from the days of eternity.” 

The glosses of Priestley and others, which would make this pas- 
sage refer to the promises or purpose of God from everlast- 
ing, are shown to be absurd. 

4. Prov. xxx, 4: ‘“ What is his name, and what is his Son’s name,” 
&c. Here there is no reference to Messiahship. 

Thus the Scriptures of the Old Testament furnished the Jews 
with the idea of a personal Son in the divine nature. 

IV.) The same ideas of divine Sonship are suggested in the New 
Testament. (P. 539.) 

1. “ When Jesus was baptized . . . This is my beloved Son, 
in whom I am well pleased.” (1.) This name, Son of God, 
was not here given with reference to the resurrection. (2.) 
Nor with’ reference to the Messiahship. Nor (3.) With 
reference to the miraculous conception. (P. 540.) It must 
follow then that Curist was, in a higher nature than his 


human, and for a higher reason than an official one, the 
“ Son of God.” 


ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


2. The epithet, “ only begotten,” affords further proof of the Son- 
ship of Christ in his divine nature. (P. 542.) 

3. Those passages which declare that all things were made by 
the Son, and that God “ sent his Son,” imply that the Creator 
was the Son of God before he was sent into the world. 
(P. 543.) 

It is assumed, but not proved, by some, that the title Son is thus 
applied by a mere interchange of titles between the human 
and divine nature. 

4. Those passages which connect the title “ Son’ immediately, 
and by way of eminence, with the divinity, remain to be con- 
sidered. (P. 545.) Such are—“ My Father worketh hi- 
therto, and I work.” John v, 17. “I and my Father are 
one.” John x, 30. “ Art thou the Son of God?’ Ans. by 
Christ: ‘Ye say that I am.” 

5. In the apostolic writings we find equal proof that the title 
“Son of God” was used even by way of opposition to the 
human nature. (1.) Rom. i, 3,4: “ Declared to be the Son 
of God with power,” &c. (2.) The apostle’s argument in 
the first chapter of Epistle to Hebrews. (3.) Rom. viii, 3: 
‘God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.” — 
(4.) “ Moses was faithful as a servant, but Christ as a Son.” 
(5.) All those passages in which the first person is called the 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Recapitulation of the argument. (Pp. 553, 554.) 

(V.) Importance of the admission of the eternal filiation of our 
Lord. (P. 554.) 

Some divines, believing the divinity of Christ, have yet opposed 
the eternal Sonship; but they have nearly, if not quite, 
adopted Unitarian modes of interpretation ; and on a point 
confessedly fundamental, they differ from the opinions held 
by the orthodox church in all ages. The following conse- 
quences of denying the divine filiation of Christ are worthy 
of note :— 

. A loose method of interpretation. 
2. The destruction of all relation among the persons of the 
Godhead. 
8. The loss of the Scriptural idea, that the Father is the foun- 
tain of Deity. 
4. The same of the perfect equality, and yet subordination, of 
the Son. | 
5. The overthrow of the doctrine of the love of the Father in 
the gift of his Son. Episcopius’s argument. 
(VI.) Objections to the divine Sonship considered. (Pp. 558-562.) 
VI. The title Worp. (P. 562.) Used principally by the evangelist 
John. Two inquiries arise here, viz. :-— 


—_ 


PERSONS OF THE GODHEAD. XXxi 


I. Whence the evangelist drew the use of this appellation? Ans, 

(1.) From the Scriptures of the Old Testament: by quotations 
from which it is shown to be a theological and not a phiosophic 
title; and one which had received the stamp of inspiration. 
a. Genesis xv, 1. b. Psalm xviii, 30, ¢. 1 Samuel iii, 21. 
d. 2 Samuel vii, 21; 1 Chronicles xvii, 19. 

(2.) The Targums further evince the theological origin of this ap- 
pellation. Illustrated by a number of quotations and referen- 
ces. (Pp. 564-3567.) 

(3.) Philo and the philosophic Jews, then, may be spared in this 
inquiry ; but it can be shown, 1. That if Philo possessed the 
idea of a personal Logos, he did not derive it from Plato. 2. 
That he did derive it from the established theology of his na- 
tion. (Pp. 568-571.) 

Il. What reasons led the evangelist to adopt this appellation? (P.572.) 

It is supposed that John wrote with a view to the suppression of 
the Gnostic heresy ; in order to afford the clearest refutation 
of those who denied the pre-existence of Christ. 

Ul. Argument from its use, against Socinianinism. (P. 575.) 

1. St. John says, the Logos “ was that light, but John Baptist was 
not.” Here is a parallel between two persons—not between 
a person and an attribute. 

2. The Logos became man. But how could an attribute become 
man? ‘The personality of the Logos being established, his. 
divinity follows of course. : 


D. CHRIST POSSESSED OF DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. (Ch. xiii.) 


God is made known to us by his attributes. Should, then, the same attri- 
butes be found ascribed in Scripture to Christ, we infer directly that 
Christ is God, 

I. Eternity is ascribed to Christ. (1.) Isaiah ix, 6, (2.) Rev. i,17, 18. 
(3.) Rey. i, 8. (4.) Hebrews xiii, 8. (5.) Hebrews i, 10-12. (6.) 
« Eternal life.” 

I. OMNIPRESENCE is ascribed to him. (1.) ‘“ No man hath ascended up 
to heaven,” &c. (2.) “ Where two or three are gathered together,” &c. 
(3.) “Lo, Iam with you always,” &c, (4.) ‘ By him all things consist.” 

_ TL Omniscrencz is ascribed to Christ. ‘Two kinds of knowledge pecu- 
liar to God :— 

1. A perfect knowledge of the thoughts and intents of the human 
heart. This is expressly attributed to Christ. (1.) “ He knew what 
was in man.” (2.) The word of God is a discerner of the thoughts 
and intents of the heart. (3.) Interpretation of Mark xiii, 32. 

2. The knowledge of futurity. This is also ascribed to Christ, John vi, 
64, and xiii, 11; and all the predictions uttered by him, and which 
are nowhere referred by him to inspiration, are in proof of his 
possessing this attribute. 


s 


&XXKll ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


TV. OMNIPOTENCE is ascribed to Christ. (1.) Rev. i, 8. (2.) To the 
Jews he said, “ What things soever the Father doeth, these also doeth 
the Son likewise.” (3.) All the Scriptural argument from the as- 
cription of divine attributes to Christ, may be summed up with his 
own remarkable declaration, “ All things which the Father hath are 
mine.” John xvi, 15. 


E. DIVINE ACTS ARE ASCRIBED TO Cunist. (Ch. xiv.) 


L Creation. Socinians admit that creation out of nothing is the work of 
a divine power, and therefore interpret those passages of the New 
Testament which speak of Christ as a Creator, as referring to a moral 
creation, or to the regulation of all things in the evangelical dispen- 
sation. Absurdity of this. 

1 The creation of “all things” is ascribed to Christ, in the introduction 
to St. John’s Gospel. This can only be understood of a physical 
creation. 

2. “By whom also he made the worlds.” Heb. i, 2. Two Socinian 
glosses are offered. 

(1.) To render the words, “ for whom also,” &c. But dca with a 
genitive, never signifies the final cause, setting aside the absur- 
dity of the worlds being made for a mere man. 

(2.) To understand “ the worlds ”—rovg atwvac—for the gospel dis- 
pensation ;—but the same phrase is ased in the eleventh chapter, 

' where it can only be understood of a physical creation :—and in 
the close of the first chapter the apostle reiterates the doctrine 
of the creation of the world by Jesus Christ. 

8. Colossians i, 15-17: ‘Who is-the image of the invisible God, 
the first-born of every creature: for by him were all things 
created,” &c. 

Socinian gloss :—‘‘ Here is meant the great change introduced into the 
moral world by the dispensation of the gospel.” 

(1.) The Arian notion, that by “ first-born” is meant “first created,” 
is easily refuted. As to date of his being, he was “before all 
created things.” As to the manner of it, he was by generation, 
not creation. 

(2.) As for the Socinian gloss, it makes the apostle say, that Christ 
was the first-made member of the Christian Church; and the 
reason for this is, that he made the Church! 

I. The preservation of the universal frame of things is ascribed to Christ 

III. The final destruction of material nature is also expressly attributed to 
him. 

IV. Our Lord claims, generally, to perform the works of his Father: 
also, to possess original miraculous powers. 

V. He promises to send the Holy Spirit. 

VI. The forgiveness of sins, unquestionably a peculiar act of Deity, was 
claimed by Christ. 


PERSONS OF THE GODHEAD. XXxIl 


_F Divine worsuip pain To Curist. (Ch. xv.) 
(a.) The fact established. (Pp. 596-606.) 

I. Prior to his ascension. 

1.) The case of the leper. 2.) Of the blind man. 3.) The disciples. 

N. B. Our Lord did not receive these acts of worship as a civil ruler. 

IJ. Subsequent to his ascension. 

1) Luke xxiv, 51, 52: ‘“ He was parted from them, and carried up 
into heaven, and they worshipped him,” &c. 2.) The prayer of 
the apostles, when filling up the place of Judas. 3.) Supplica- 
tions of Stephen, the protomartyr. Futility of the Socinian 
gloss, and that of Dr. Priestley. 4.) Paul’s prayer, when afflict- 
ed with the “thorn in the flesh.’ 5.) Paul’s prayer in behalf 
of the Thessalonians. 

Ill. Adoration of Christ among heavenly beings. 

1.) “ Let all the angels of God worship him.” Psalm xevii. Horsley’s 
Remarks. 2.) Psalm Ixxii. 8.) The Book of Revelation. 

IV. All the doxologies to Christ, and all the benedictions made in his 
name, in common with those of the Father and the Holy Spirit, 
are forms of worship. 

(b.) Its bearing examined. (P. 607.) 

1. From the avowed religious sentiments of the apostles, they could not 
pay religious worship to Christ unless they considered him a divine 
person. 

2. We collect the same from their uniform practice. 

3. The Arian doctrine of supreme and inferior worship refuted by Dr. 
Waterland. 

4. The Socinians, more consistently, refuse to “‘ honour the Son as . 

. the Father.” The passage, Philip. ii, 5-7, is shown to contain 
the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, without which it cannot be 
rationally interpreted. 


TU.) Person or Curist. (Ch. xvi.) 


L Humanity of Christ. In the early church it was necessary to establish 
that Christ possessed a real human nature. Notice the following 
1. Erroneous opinions. 1.) The Gnostics denied the real existence of 
the body of Christ. 2.) The Apollinarian heresy rejected the exis- 
tence of a human soul in our Lord. 3.) Among those who held the 
union of the two natures in Christ, there were various opinions— 
those of the Nestorians, Monophisites, and Monothelites. 
g. The true sense of Scripture was given by the Council of Chalcedon, in 
the fifth century :—with whose formula the Athanasian Creed agrees, 
’ and the orthodox church has adopted this creed. Certainly, without 
keeping in view the completeness of each nature, we shall find it im- 
possible, in many places, to apprehend the sense of the Scriptures. 
(Pp. 618, 619.) 


X¥XIY ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S i:NSTITUTES 


Il. The union of the two natures of Christ in one hypostusis is equally es- 
sential to the full exposition of the Scriptures. The following passages 
illustrate this :— 

1. “The Word was made flesh.” 
2. “The Church of God, purchased by his own blood.” 
Digression—to examine Dr. P. Smith’s view of orthodox language. 
3. “ For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” Col. ii, 9 
4. “ When he had by himself purged our sins,” &c. Heb. i, 3. 


These and similar passages may be embraced under the two following 
classes :—1.) Those which speak of the efficacy of the sufferings of 
Christ for remission of sins. 2.) Those which argue from the compas 
sion, &c., of our Lord, to the exercise of confidence in him. 


Il. Errors as to the person of Christ. 

1. Arianism: so called from its author, Arius, whose characteristic tenet 
was that Christ was the first and most exalted of creatures. 

2. Sabellianism: which, asserting the divinity of the Son and the Spirit, 
and denying the personality of both, stands equally opposed to 
Arianism and Trinitarianism. 

3. Socinianism, in which the two former are now nearly merged. This 
last has been fully refuted by the establishment of the Scripture doc- 
trine of a trinity of divine persons in the unity of the Godhead, 
which involves a refutation of the other two heresies. 


(IV.) PERSONALITY AND Deiry OF THE Hoty Guost, (Ch. xvii.) 


I. As to the manner of the Being of the Holy Ghost—the orthodox doctrine 
is, that as Christ is Gop by an eternal FILIATION, so the Spirit is God 
by PROCESSION from the Father and the Son. The doctrine of pro- 
cession rests on direct Scripture authority, as stated by Bishop Pearson. 

1. “Even the Spirit of truth, which PRocEEDETH from the Father.” 
John xv, 26. 

2. The very expressions which are spoken of the Holy Spirit in relation 
to the FATHER, are also spoken of the same Spirit in relation to the 
SON. 


II. Arius regarded the Spirit as created by Christ; but afterward his fol- 
lowers considered the Holy Ghost as the exerted energy of God, which 
notion, with some modifications, is adopted by Socinians. 


II. Scriptural argument for the personality and deity of the Holy Ghost. 
(a.) From the frequent association in Scripture of a person, under that 
appellation, with two other persons, one of whom, “the Father,” is 
by all acknowledged to be divine; and the ascription to each, or te 
the three in union, of the same acts, titles, authority, and worship, in 
an equal degree. 


ORIGINAL SIN. xXXxXxv¥ 


. Association of the three persons in ereative acts. 


1 

2. Do. in the preservation of all things. 
3. Do. in the inspiration of the prophets. 
4. Do as objects of supreme worship. 

5. Do. in the form of baptism. 

) 


Some other arguments, (p 637,) for 

(1.) The personality of the Spirit. 1.) He proceeds from the Father 
and Son, and cannot therefore be either. 2.) Many Scriptures 
are absurd unless the Holy Ghost be a person. 38.) The Holy 
Ghost is spoken of in many passages where personification is im- 
possible. 4.) The use of masculine pronouns and relatives in the 
Greek of the New Testament, in connexion with the neuter noun 
mvevea—Spirit. 

(2.) The divinity of the Spirit. 1.) He is the subject of blasphemy 
2.) He is called God. 3.) He is the source of inspiration. 


Il. DOCTRINES RELATING TO MAN.—(Ch. xviii-xxix.) 


(A.)—ORIGINAL SIN. 


J. Man’s primitive condition. (Pp. 3-19.) 
If. Testimony of Scripture as to the fall of man. (Pp. 19-43.) 
Ill. Results of the fall, to Adam and his posterity. (Pp. 43-87.) 


L Man’s PRIMITIVE CONDITION. 


(I.) Adam was made under law, as all his descendants are born under law. 
1. There is evidence of the existence of a moral as well as a natural 
government of the universe. 
2. The Jaw under which all moral agents—angels, devils, or men—are 
placed, there is reason to believe, is, in its great principles, the same. 
3. Each particular law supposes the general one. Law was not first in- 
‘troduced into the world when the law of Moses was engraven on the 
tables of stone. 


{II.) The history of man’s creation in brief. (P. 8.) 

1. The manner of the narration indicates something peculiar and eminent 
in the being formed. “And God said, Let us make man in our 
image,” &c. 

2. The image of God—in what did it consist ? 

(1.) Not in the body. 

(25 Not in the dominion granted to man in this lower world. 

(3.) Nor in any one essential quality :—as the evidence of Scripture 1s 
sufficiently explicit, that it comprises what may be lost and regained, 

(4.) But, theologically speaking, we have 


X¥XXVl ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


(a.) The natural image of God—consisting of spirituality, immortality, 
and intellectual powers. 

(b.) The moral image proved from the following passages of Scrip- 
ture :—(1.) Ecc. vii: “ God made man upright.” (2.) Col. iti, 10. 
(3.) Eph. iv, 24. (4.) “And God saw. . . . and behold it 
was very good.” 

(5.) As to the degree of Adam’s perfection in the image of God, thera 
are two extreme opinions. Without falling into either of these, 
we have the following conclusions :— 

1. Adam was sinless both in act and principle. 
2. He possessed the faculty of knowledge, and also 
8. Holiness and righteousness, which express not only sinlessness, 
but positive and active virtues. 
3. Objection to the creation of man in the moral image of God, by Dr. 
Taylor, answered. 

(1.) The fallacy of the objection lies in confounding habits of holiness 
with the principle. 

(2.) Answer quoted from Wesley. 

(3.) From Edwards. 

4. Final cause of the creation of man—the display of the glory of God, and 
principally of his moral perfections. 


I. THe FALL OF MAN. (P. 19.) 


The Mosaic account, (the garden, serpent, &c.,) teaches of, (1) the existence 
of an evil spirit; (2) the introduction of a state of moral corruptness 
into human nature; and (3) a vicarious atonement for sin. There are 
three classes of opinions held among the interpreters of this account. 


(I.) Class. Those which deny the literal sense, and regard the whole 
narration as an instructive mythos. 
(A.) Two facts sufficiently refute these notions. 

1. The account of the fall of the first pair is a part of a continuous 
history. If, then, the account of the fall may be excepted as 
allegorical, any subsequent portion of the Pentateuch may in 
like manner be taken away. 

2. The literal sense of the history is referred to, and reasoned upen, 
as such, in various parts of Scripture. (Pp. 22, 23.) 

(B.) Objections have been started to the literal and historical interpre- 
tation, of which the following are specimens :— 

1 “It is unreasonable to suppose that the fruit of the tree of hfe. 
could confer immortality.” But 

(1.) Why could not this tree be the appointed means of preserving 
health and life ? 

(2.) Why may not the eating of the fruit be regarded as a sacra- 
mental act ? 


ORIGINAL SIN. XXXVil 


2. “ How could the fruit of the tree of knowledge have any effect 
upon the intellectual powers ?” 

(1.) Surely the tree might be called “ the tree of knowledge of 
good and evil,” because by eating of its fruit man came to 
know, by sad experience, the value of the good he had for- 
feited, &c.; or, 

(2.) It was the test of Adam’s fidelity, and hence the name was 
proper. 

8. Objection has been made to the account of the serpent, (a.) That 
it makes “the invisible tempter assume the body of an animal.” 
Who can prove this to be impossible? (b.) “ But the serpent 
spoke!” So did Balaam’s ass. (c.) “ But Eve was not surpri- 
sed.” Why should she? or, if she were, the history need not 
mention so slight a matter. (d.) “ But the serpent was unjustly 
sentenced, if merely an instrument.” The serpent certainly 
held its rank at the pleasure of the Creator. 

(C.) Tradition comes in to support the literal sense of the history. 

1. The ancient Jewish writers, Apocrypha, &c. 

2. The various systems of heathen mythology—Greek, Egyptian 
Indian, Roman, Gothic, and Hindoo. 


(I1.) Class. Those who interpret the account in part literally and in part 


allegorically. (P. 30.) Sufficiently answered by quotation from 
Bishop Horsley. 


(III.) Class. Those who believe that the history has, in perfect accord- 
ance with the literal interpretation, a mystical and higher sense than 
the letter. This sentiment, without running into the extravagances 
of mysticism, is the orthodox doctrine. The history is before us ;— 
but rightly to understand it, these four points should be kept in 
view, ViZ.:— 

1. Man was in a state of trial. 
(1.) This involved power of obedience and disobedience. 
(2.) That which determines to the one or the other, is the will. 
(3.) Our first parents were subject to temptation from intellectual 
pride, from sense, and from passion. 
(4.) To resist such temptation, prayer, vigilance, &c., were requisite. 
2. The prohibition of a certain fruit was but one part of the law under 
which man was placed. ; 
(? .) Distinction between positive and shotat precepts. 
(2.) The moral reason for this positive precept—as indeed for pro- 
bably all others—may be easily discovered. 
8. The serpent was but the instrument of the real tempter, who, was that 
evil spirit whose Scriptural appellatives are the Devil and Satan. 
Existence and power of this spirit clearly declared in Scripture. - 
4. The curse of the serpent was symbolical of the punishment of Satam 


XXXVIli ANALYSIS JF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


This symbolical interpretation defended by three considerations 
(Pp. 39-42.) 


[IL ResuLts oF THE FALL. (Pp. 43-87.) 


(I.) To Adam, inevitable death, after a temporary life of severe labour 

(Pp. 43-51.) 

1. Statement of opinions as to the extent and application of this penalty. 

(a.) Pelagian notion,—Adam would have died had he not sinned. 

(b.) Pseudo-Arminian doctrine of Whitby and others. (Pp. 43-45.) 

(c.) Arminius’s doctrine, taken from his writings. With this nearly 
agree the Remonstrants, Augsburg Confession, Church of England, 
French and Scottish churches. 

2. Import of the term death, as used in Scripture. (P. 48.) 

(a.) “ Death came into the world by sin.” 

(b.) It does not imply annihilation. 

(c.) It extends to the soul as well as to the body, thus embracing (1.) 
Bodily death, i. e., the separation of the soul from the body. (2.) 
Spiritual death, i. e., the separation of the soul from God. (3.) 
Eternal death, i. e., separation from God, and a positive infliction 
of his wrath in a future state. 

Taylor’s objection answered by Wesley and Edwards. 


(IL) This sentence extended to Adam’s posterity. (Pp. 52-61.) 

1. The testimony of Scripture explicitly establishes a federal connexion 
between Adam and his descendants. Rom. v; 1 Cor. xv, 22. 

2. The imputation of Adam’s sin to his posterity, is the result of this con 
nexion. Not mediate—not immediate—but the legal result of sin. 

8. The consequences of this imputation are, 1.) Death of the body. 2.) 
Spiritual death. 3.) Eternal death. 

4. Objections are raised against this doctrine—of two kinds, viz.:—one 
against high Calvinism, which we leave to take care of itself; and 
the other against the legal part of this transaction, without consider- 
ing, in connexion with it, the evangelical scheme. The case may be 
considered 

(1.) With regard to adults. The remedial scheme offers, a.) In oppo- 
sition to bodily death—the resurrection. b.) In opposition to spirit- 
ual death—spiritual life. c¢.) In opposition to eternal death~ 
eternal life. 

(2) With regard to infants. a.) The benefits of Christ’s death are 
coextensive with the sin of Adam, (Rom. v, 18 ;) hence all children 
dying in infancy partake of the free gift. b.) Infants are not in- 
deed born justified; nor are they capable of that voluntary ac- 
ceptance of the benefits of the free gift which is necessary in the 
case of adults: but, on the other hand, they cannot reject it; and 
it is by the rejection of it that adults perish. c.) The process by 
which grace is communicated to infants is not revealed: the ad- 


ORIGINAL SIN. XXxiX 


ministration doubtless differs from that employed toward adults. 
d.) Certain instrumental causes may be considered in the case of 
children, viz., the intercession of Christ; ordinances of the church; 
prayers of parents, &c. 


IL) The moral condition in which men are actually born into the worid. 

I. Several facts of experience are to be accounted for. 

1. That in all ages great and general national wickedness has prevailed. 

2. The strength of the tendency to this wickedness, marked by two vir- 
cumstances :—1.) The greatness of the crimes to which mer have 
abandoned themselves. 2.) The number of restraints against 
which this tide of evil has urged its course. 

3. The seeds of the vices may be discovered in children in their earliest 
years. 

4. Every man is conscious of a natural tendency to many evils. 

5. ‘fhe passions, appetites, and inclinations, make strong resistance, 
when man determines to renounce his evil courses. 

Il. To account for these facts, we derive from Scripture the hypothesis,— 
that man is by nature totally corrupt and degenerate, and of himself 
incapable of any good thing. The following passages contain this 
doctrine :—1.) Gen. v, 3: ‘Adam begat a son in his own likeness.” 
2.) Gen. vi, 5: “ Every imagination,” &c. 3.) Gen. viii, 21: ‘* The 
imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” 4.) Book of Job 
xi, 12; v, 7; xiv, 47; xv, 14. 5.) Psalm li, 5; Iviii, 3,4. 6.) Pro. 
xxii, 15; xxix, 15. 7.) Romans ili, 10, quoted from Psalm xiv. 8.) 
That class of passages which speak of evil as a distinguishing mark 
not of any one man, but of human nature: Jeremiah, &c. 9.) Our 
Lord’s discourse with Nicodemus, John iii. 10.) Argument in third 
chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. 

The doctrine of the natural and universal corruption of man’s nature, 
thus obtained from Scripture, fully accounts for the above-mentioned 
five facts of experience. Let us see how far they can be ex- 
plained on 

Til. The theory of man’s natural innocence and purity. (P. 74.) This 
doctrine refers these phenomena to 

1. General bad example. But 1.) This does not account for the intro- 
duction of wickedness. 2.) How could bad example become 
general, if men are generally disposed to good. 3.) This very 
hypothesis admits the power of evil example, which is almost giving 
up the matter in dispute. 4.) This theory does not account for 
the strong bias to evil in men, nor for the vicious tempers of chil: 
dren, nor for the difficulty of virtue. 

The advocates of this doctrine refer also to 

2 Vicious education, to account for these phenomena. But 1.) Where 
did Cain get his vicious education? 3.) Why should education be 
generally bad, unless men are predisposed to evil. 8.) But, in 


x] ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES 


fac, education in all countries has in some degree opposed vice. 
4.) As for the other facts, education is placed upon the same ground 
as example. 

V_ Sume take a milder view of the case than the orthodox, denying these 
tendencies to various excesses to be sinful, until they are approved by 
the will. (P. 77.) But why this universal compliance of the will with 
what is known to be evil, unless there be naturally a corrupt state 
of the mind, which is what we contend for. The death of children 
proves that all men are “constituted” and treated as “sinners.” 

V. Nature of original sin. 

1 A privation of the image of God, according to Arminius. 

2. No infusion of evil into the nature of man by God, but positive evil, 
as the effect, is connected with privation of the life of God, as the 
cause. 

3. As to the transmission of this corrupt nature, the Scriptural doctrine 
seems to be that the soul is ex traduce, and not by immediate creation 
from God. This doctrine does not necessarily tend to materialism, 

4 It does not follow from the corruption of human nature that there 
can be nothing virtuous among men before regeneration. (P. 83.) 
But all that is good in its principle is due to the Holy Spirit, 
whose influences are afforded to all, in consequence of the atone- 
ment offered for all. The following reasons may be assigned for 
the apparent virtues that are noticed among unregenerate men:— 
1.) The understanding of man cannot reject demonstrated truth. 
2.) The interests of men are often connected with right and wrong. 
3.) The seeds of sin need exciting circumstances for their full de- 
velopment. 4.) All sins cannot show themselves in all men. 5.) 
Some menare more powerfully bent to one vice: some to another. 

But all virtues grounded on principle, wherever seen among men, are to 
be ascribed to the Holy Spirit, which has been vouchsafed to “ the 
world,” through the atonement. 


(B..—REDEMPTION. (Ch. xix—xxix.) 


(1.) PrincIPLES OF REDEMPTION. (Ch, xix-xxil.) 
{. Principles of God’s moral government. (Ch. xix.) 


The penalty of death was not immediately executed in all its extent upon 
the first sinning pair. Why was it not? In order to answer this ques- 
tion, the character of God, and the principles of his moral government, 
will be briefly examined. 

(L) The divine character is illustrated by the extent and severity of the 
punishments denounced against transgression. (P. 88.) 

(II.) It is more fully illustrated by the testimony of God himself in the 
Scriptures, (p. 89,) where 

1. The divine holiness, and 
2. The divine justice, are abundantly declared. Justice is either, 1) 


REDEMPTION. xli 


universal, or 2) particular,—which latter is commutative, (respecting 
equals,) or distributive, (which is exercised only by governors.) Of 
the strictness and severity of the distributive justice of God, the sen- 
tence of death is sufficient evidence. 

WI.) Connexion between the essential justice of God, and such a consti- 
tution of law and government. (P. 91.) 

1 The creation of free human beings involved the possibility of evil voli- 
tions and acts, and consequently misery. 

2. To prevent these evils was the end of the divine government, the first 
act of which was the publication of the will or law of God: the 
second, to give motives to obedience, happiness, justice, fear. 

3. It was necessary to secure obedience, that the highest penalty should 
be affixed to transgression. 

4. Admitting its necessity, its institution was demanded by 1.) The holi- 

ness; 2.) The justice; and 3.) The goodness of God. 

(IV.) Does the justice of God oblige him to execute the penalty? The 
opponents of the doctrine of atonement deny this; but we can show 
that 3 

1. Sin cannot be forgiven by the mere prerogative of God: for 

(1.) God cannot give up his right to obedience, without indifference to 
moral rectitude. 

(2.) Nor can the Deity give up his right to punish disobedience, without 
either (a) partiality, if pardon be granted to a few; or (b) the 
abrogation, in effect, of law, if pardon be extended to all. 

2. Nor does REPENTANCE, on the part of the offender, place him in a new 
relation, and thus render him a fit object of pardon. Those who 
hold this doctrine, admit the necessity of something which shall make 
it right as well as merciful for God to forgive. But we deny re- 
pentance to be that something; for 

(1.) We find no intimation in Scripture that the penalty of the law is 
not to be executed in case of repentance. 

(2.) It is not true that repentance changes the legal relation of the 
guilty to God, whom they have offended. They are offenders 
still, though penitent. 

(3.) So far from repentance producing this change of relation, we 
have proofs to the contrary, both from the Scriptures and the es- 
tablished course of providence. 

’4,) The true nature of repentance, as stated in the Scriptures, is 
overlooked by those who hold this doctrine. 

(5.) (P. 101.) In the gospel, which professedly lays down the means 
by which men are to obtain the pardon of their sins, that pardon 
is not connected with mere repentance. 


1. Death of Christ propitiatory. (Ch. xx.) 


In this and the two following chapters, we investigate that method of love, 
wisdom, and justice, by which a merciful God justifies the ungodly: 
VoL. I.—D. 


‘ 


xlil ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S. INSTITUTES. 


first, examining the statements of the New. Testament; secondly, the 
sacrifices of the law; and thirdly, the patriarchal sacrifices :—from which 
investigation we hope to show clearly the unity of the three great dis- 
pensations of religion to man, the patriarchal, Levitical, and Christian, 
in the great principle, “ that without the shedding of blood there is no 
remission.” And first, 


A. Proof from the New Testament. (Ch. xx.) 


I Man’s salvation is. ascribed in the New Testament. to; the death of Christ, 
and 
1. The Socinian considers the death of Christ merely as the means by 
which repentance is produced in the heart. of man. 
2. The Arian connects with it that kind of merit which arises from a 
generous and: benevolent self-devotion. But 


Il. The New Testament represents the death of Christ as necessary to, sal- 
vation; not as the meritorious means, but as the meritorious cause. 
1. The necessity of Christ’s death follows the admission of his divinity. 
2. The matter is put beyond question by the direct testimony of Serip- 
; ture : “ thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead,” &c. 


II. The New Testament informs us that Christ died “ for us,” that is, in 
our room and stead. (P. 106.) 
1. All those passages in which Christ is said to have died “ for” (dep or 
avtt) men, prove that he died for us not consequently but dtrectly, as 
a substitute. 
2. Those passages in which he is said to have “borne the punishment due 
to our offences,” prove the same thing: | 
Grotius clearly proves that the Scriptures represent our sins as the 
impulsive cause of the death of Christ. 
8. The passage in Isaiah liii, ‘the chastisement of our peace was upon 
him,” &c., is applied to Christ by the apostles. 
4, The apostle Paul—2 Cor. v, 21. 
5. Gal. iii, 13. 


IV. Some passages of the New Testament; connect, with: the death of: Christ, 

the words: propitiation, atonement, and. reconciliation. (P. 112.) 

1. Propitiation. 

(1:): Definition—to propitiate is to atone, to turn away the wrath of an 
offended person. 

(2.) The Socinians, in. their improved version, admit that it was ‘the 
pacifying of an offended party ;” but insist that Christ: is a propitia- 
tion, because “ by his. gospel, le brings: sinners to repentance, and 
thus averts the divine displeasure.” On this ground, Moses was a 
propitiation also. © 

(3.) Socinians, also. deny the existence of wrath in, God :—in order to 
show, that: propitiation, in a proper sense, cannot be taught in 


REDEMPTION. xlin 


Scripture. But Scripture abundantly asserts that “ God is angry 
with the wicked.” 

In holding this Scriptural doctrine, we do not assert the existence of 
wrath as a vengeful passion in the divine mind: this is one of 
the many caricatures of orthodoxy by Socinianism. 

2. Reconciliation, (p. 117,) occurs, Col. i, 19, 22; Rom. v, 10,11; 2 Cor. 

v, 18, 19. 

(1.) The expressions “ reconciliation,” “making peace,” imply a pre- 
vious state of mutual hostility between God and man. This rela- 
tion is a legal one, as that of sovereign and criminal. The term 
enmity, used as it respects God, is unfortunate; but certainly 
something more is implied in reconciliation than man’s laying aside 
his enmity to God. (P. 118.) 

(2.) Various passages of Scripture go directly to prove this. (P. 119.) 
Rom. v, 11; 2 Cor. v, 19; Eph. ii, 16. 

(3.) Socinian objection to the doctrine of reconciliation answered. 
(P. 121.) 


v. Some texts speak of redemption in connexion with the death of Christ, 
e.g., Rom. iii, 24; Gal. iii, 13; Eph. i, 7; 1 Pet. i, 18, 19; 1 Cor. vi, 
19, 20. (P. 122.) 

<1.) The Socinian notion of a gratuitous deliverance is refuted by the 
very terms used in the above-cited passages: such as Avrpow, to 

redeem, &c. 

2.) The means by which it has been attempted to evade the force of 
these statements must be refuted. They are 
1. “ That the term redemption is sometimes used for simple deliverance, 
when no price is supposed to be given.” Answer, 

a. The occasional use of the term in an improper manner, cannot be 
urged against its strict signification. 

b. Our redemption by Christ is emphatically spoken of in connexion 
with the yutpov, or redemption price; but this word is never 
added to the deliverance effected for the Israelites by Moses. 

2. “ That our interpretation of these passages would involve the absur- 
dity of paying a price to Satan.” Answer, 

a. The idea of redemption is not to be confined to the purchasing 
of a captive. 

b Nor does it follow, even in that case, that the price must be paid 
to him who detains the captive. Our captivity to Satan is ju- 
dicial, and satisfaction is to be made, not to the jailer, but to him 
whose law has been violated. 

8. “ That our doctrine is inconsistent with the freeness’of the grace of 
God in the forgiveness of sins.” (P. 127.) Answer, 

a. Dr. Priestley himself, in requiring penitence from the sinner, ad- 
mits that grace may be free, while not unconditional. j 

b The passage of St. Paul which Dr. P. quotes, rans'thus: “ Being 


xliv ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


justified freely by his grace, through the redemption which is in 
Christ Jesus.” 

c. When sin is spoken of as a debt freely remitted, it is clear that a 
metaphor is employed. (P. 129.) 


VI. The nature of the death of Christ is still further explained in the New 
Testament, by the manner in which it connects our justification with 
Saith in the blood of Christ; and both our justification and the death of 
Christ with the “ righteousness of God.” Rom. iii, 24-26. 

(a.) Thus the forgiveness of sin is not only an act of mercy, but an act 
of justice. 
(b.) The steps of this “demonstration” of the righteousness of God are 
easily to be traced ; for, 
1. The law is by this means established in its authority and perpetuity. 
2. On any other theory, there is no manifestation of God’s hatred of 
sin, commensurate with the intense holiness of the divine nature. 
3. The person who suffered the penalty of the law for us was the Son 
of God—in him divinity and humanity were united: and thus, as | 
“God spared not his own Son,” his justice is declared to be in- 
flexible and inviolable. 

The Socinians object that ‘the dignity of a person adds nothing to 
the estimation of his sufferings.” But (1,) the common opinion 
of mankind in all ages is directly against this; and (2,) the tes- 
timony of Scripture is explicit on this point. 

4. Though all men are brought, by the death of Christ, into a salva- 
ble state, yet none of them are brought from under the authority 
of the moral law. 


VI. “ The satisfaction made to divine justice,” is a phrase which, though 
not found in Scripture, is yet of theological value, and deserves to be 
considered. (P. 137.) 

(I.) There are two views of satisfaction among those who hold the doctrine 
of atonement, viz. :— 

1. That the sufferings and death of Christ are, for the dignity of his 
nature, regarded as a full equivalent and adequate compensation 
for the punishment of the personally guilty by death. 

2. That Christ made satisfaction for our sins, not because his death is 
to be considered a full equivalent for the remission of punishment, 
but because his suffering in our stead maintained the honour of 
the divine law, and yet gave free scope to the mercy of the law- 
giver. 

Both these are defective, but the first may be admitted, with some 
explanations. | 
(II.) Some explanatory observations then are necessary. (P. 138.) 

1. The term satisfaction is taken from the Roman law, and signifies 
the contentment of an injured party by anything which he may 
choose to accept in place of the enforcement of his obigation upon 


REDEMPTION. xlv 


the party offending. As a just governor, then, God is satisfied,— 
contented with the atonement offered by the vicarious death of 
his Son. 

2. The effect produced upon the mind of the lawgiver is not the satis- 
faction, as the Socinians would say, of a vengeful affection. 

3. Nor is the death of Christ to be regarded merely as a wise and fit 
expedient of government; for this may imply that it was one of 
many possible expedients, though the best. (P. 139.) 

(IL.) The Antinomian perversion of these phrases needs to be refuted. 

1. Antinomians connect the satisfaction of Christ with the doctrine of 
the imputation of his active righteousness to believers; but, 1.) 
We have no such office ascribed in Scripture to the active righteous- 
ness of Christ. 2.) This doctrine of imputation makes Christ’s 
sufferings superfluous. 3.) It leaves man without law, and God 
without dominion. 4.) This is not satisfaction in any good sense: 
it is merely the performance of all that the law requires by one 
person substituted for another. 

2. The terms full satisfaction and equivalent, are taken by the Antino- 
mians in the sense of payment of debts by a surety; but we answer, 
He who pays a debt for another, does not render an equivalent, 
but gives precisely what the original obligation requires. 

3. The Antinomian view makes the justification of men a matter of 
right, not of grace. On their view, we cannot answer the Socinian 
objection, that satisfaction destroys the free nature of an act of 
forgiveness. 


VIII. It is sometimes said that we do not know the vinculum between the 
sufferings of Christ and the pardon of sin. (P. 143.) But Scripture 
seems to give definite information on this point, in declaring the death 
of Christ to be a “demonstration of the righteousness of God.” 


IX. Objection is made tothe justice of the substitution of the innocent for 
the guilty. But, 

1. It has always been considered a virtue to suffer for others under cer- 
tain circumstances; and the justice of such acts has never been 
questioned. Still, 

2. It is wrong to illustrate this doctrine by analogies between the suffer- 
ings of Christ and the sufferings of persons on account of the sins of 
others. And, 

8. The principle of vicarious punishment could not justly be adopted 
by human governments in any case whatever. But, 

4. In regard to the offering of Christ,—the circumstances, (1) of the will- 
ingness of the substitute to submit to the penalty, and (2) his right 
thus to dispose of himself, fully clear up the question of justice. 

The difficulty of reconciling the sufferings of Christ with the divine jus- 
tice lies rather with the Socinians than with us. Ezek. xviii, 20; is 
satisfactorily explained by Grotius. 


xlyi ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


B. Proof from the sacrifices of the law. (Ch. xxi.) 


Having adduced, from the New Testament, cogent proofs of the vicarious 
efficacy of Christ’s death, we proceed, Ly the light of the argument 
already made good, to examine the use mae of the sacrificial terms 
of the Old Testament; and first, the sacrifices of the law. 

The terms taken from the Jewish sacrifiees, (such as “ Lamb of God,” 
“ Passover,” &c.,) when used by the writers of the New Testament, 
would be not only absurd, bet criminally misleading both to Jews and 
Gentiles, unless intended to teach the sacrificial character of the 
death of Christ. (Pp. 149, 150.) 

st is necessary to establish the expiatory nature of the Jewish sacrifices, and 
their typical character, both of which have been questioned. To 
prove that 

I. The Levitical sacrifices were expiatory, it is only necessary to show 
that the eminent sacrifices were such. (P. 151.) 
The notion that these sacrifices were mere mulcts or fines is disproved 
1. By the general appointment (Levit. xvii, 10, 11) of the blood to be 
an atonement for the souls. (P. 153.) 
2. By particular instances: e. g., Levit. vy, 15, 16. (P. 154.) 
3. By the fact, that atonement was required by the law to be made 
by sin-offerings and burnt-offerings for even bodily distempers 
and disorders. (P. 155.) 
4. By the sacrifices offered statedly for the whole congregation. 
5. By the sacrifice of the passover. (P. 158.) 


II. The Levitical sacrifices were also types. (P. 159.) 
A type is a sign or example, prepared and designed by God to prefigure some 
future thing. St. Paul shows that the Levitical sacrifices were such. 
1. In his general description of the typical character of the “ church in 
the wilderness.” 
2. In his notice of the Levitical sacrifices in particular. 
3. The ninth chapter of Hebrews gives direct declarations of the ap- 
pointment and designation of the tabernacle service to be a shadow 
of good things to come. 


Ill. Sacrificial allusions are employed in the New Testament to describe 
the nature and effect of the death of Christ, not figuratively, but properly. 
(a.) Illustrated in various passages :—1. For he hath “‘made him to be 
sin for us, who knew no sin.” 2. Ephes. v, 2: “ Christ loved us, and 
gave himself for us,’ &c. 3. The whole argument of St. Paul in 
the Epistle to the Hebrews, 4. ‘¢ And almost all things are by the 
law purged with blood,” &e. 
(b.) Illustrated by distinction between figurative and analogical language 
Quotation from Veysies’ Bampton Lectures. 


IV. As to the objection, that the Jewish sacrifices had no reference to the 
expiation of moral transgression, we observe, 


REDEMPTION. xlvil 


1. That a distinction is to be made between sacrifices as a part of the 
theo-political law of the Jews, and sacrifice as a rite practised by 
their fathers. 

2 Atonement was ordered to be made for sins committed against any 
divine commandment. 

8. But ifall the sin-offerings of the Levitical institute had respected legal 
atonement and ceremonial purification, that circumstance would not 
invalidate the true sacrifice of Christ. 


C From the patriarchal sacrifices. (Ch. xxii.) 


Having shown that the sacrifices of the law were expiatory, we proceed 
now to show the same of the Ante-Mosaical sacrifices. The proofs are, 


I. The distribution of beasts into clean and unclean. 


Ii. The prohibition of blood for food. 


Il. The sacrifices of the patriarchs were those of animal victims, and their 
use was to avert the displeasure of God from sinning men: e. g., those 
of Job, Noah, and Abel. But as this last has given rise to controversy, 
we shall consider more at large 


IV. Abel’s sacrifice. (P. 173.) 

1. As to the matter of it,—it was an animal offering: not wool or milk, 
as Grotius and Le Clere would have it, but the “ firstlings of his 
flock.” 

2. This animal offering was indicative of Abel’s faith, as declared by the 
apostle, Hebrews, chapter xi. 

8. But Davison, in his “ Inquiry,” asserts that the divine testimony was 
not to the “ specific form of Abel’s oblation, but to his actual righte- 
ousness.” : 

The objections to this view of the matter are many. 

(1.) It leaves out entirely all consideration of the difference between 
the sacrifice of Abel and that of Cain. 

(2.) It passes over Abel’s “faith,” as evinced in this transaction. 

(3.) The apostle is not speaking of the general tendency of faith to in- 
duce a holy life, but of faith as producing certain acts; and his 
reference is to Abel’s faith, as expressing itself by his offering a 
more excellent sacrifice. 

(4.) St. John’s incidental allusion to Abel’s personal righteousness does 
not in the least affect the statement of Paul, who treated profes- 
sedly, not incidentally, the subject. And Genesis iv, 7, may be 
considered in two views: either, a.) to “do well” may mean, to do 
as Abel had done ; or, b) the words may be considered as a decla- 
ration of the principles of God’s righteous government over men. 

4. If then Abel’s faith had an immediate connexion with his sacrifice, the 
question occurs, to what had that faith respect ? (P.178.) Let us il-- - 
lustrate the object of the faith of the elders, from Heb. xi, and then 


xlvill 


ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


ascertain the object of Abel’s faith also, from the acts in which it im- 
bodied itself. In this chapter, then, 

‘1.) Faith is taken in the sense of affiance in God; and supposes some 
promise or revelation on his part, as the warrant for every act of 
affiance,—as in the cases of Enoch, Noah, Abraham, &c. 

(2.) This revelation was antecedent to the faith; but the acts and the 
revelation had a natural and striking conformity to each other: e. g., 
Noah, &c. Our inference, then, as to Abel’s sacrifice, is, that it 
was not eucharistic merely, but an act of faith, having respect 
to a previous and appropriate revelation. The conclusion im- 
bodied in the words of Archbishop Magee is warranted by the 
argument. 

(3.) But it may be asked, What evidence have we from Scripture that 
such an antecedent revelation was made ? (P. 182.) We have 

(a.) The necessary inferences from the circumstances of the transac- 


(b.) 


tion, which, combined with the apostle’s interpretation of them, 
enable us sufficiently to defend this ground. The text which 
may be wanting in the Old Testament is often supplied by the 
inspired comment in the New: e. g., the manna, the rock, &e. 
. If it be argued that such types were not understood, as 
such, by the persons among whom they were first instituted, the 
answer is,—1. Either they were in some degree revealed to such 
as prayed for light, or we must conclude that the whole system 
of types was without edification to the Jews, and instructive only 
to us. 2. We have,in Heb. xi, in the case of Abraham, a direct 
proof of a distinct revelation, which is nowhere recorded as such 
in the Mosaic history. 
Besides these inferences, however satisfactory, we have an ac- 
count, though brief, of such revelation. (1.) The brevity of the 
account in the Mosaic history, is doubtless not without good 
reason; and (2,) brief as it is, we can easily collect, from the 
early part of Genesis, no unimportant information in regard to 
primitive theology. (3.) It is in regard to the first promise that 
we join issue with Mr. Davison; (p. 188;) believing that hig 
view of it (Inquiry, &c.) contains, with some truth, much error. 
For, a.) It is assumed, contrary to evidence, that the Book of 
Genesis is a complete history of the religious opinions of the 
patriarchs ; and he would have the promise interpreted by them 
so as to convey only a general indistinct impression of a deliverer, 
and that the doctrines of the divinity, incarnation, &c., of that 
deliverer were not in any way to be apprehended in this promise. 
Let us see, then, whether the promise, “interpreted by itself,” 
must not have led the patriarchs many steps at least toward 
these doctrines. b.) The divine nature of the promised Re- 
deemer, we are told, was a separate revelation. (P. 190.) But 
surely, the work assigned to him—the blessings he was to pro- 


REDEMPTION. xlix 


cure—the power that he was to exercise, according to the pro- 
mise,—were all indications of a nature superior to humanity, 
and to the angels. c.) The doctrine of the incarnation was con- 
tained also in the promise : this restorer was to be of “ the seed 
of the woman.” (P. 191.) d.) So of the doctrine of vicarious 
sufferings: “the heel of the seed of the woman was to be 
bruised,” &e. (P. 192.) 

(4.) It is urged by Mr. Davison, that the faith spoken of in Hebrews xi, 
had for its simple object, that ‘‘ God is the rewarder of such as 
diligently seek him.” But, 

(a.) Though this is supposed as the groundwork of every act of faith, 
yet the special acts recorded have each their special object; and, 
(b.) This notion could not be at all apposite to the purpose for 
which this recital of the faith of the elders was addressed to the 
Hebrews. ‘Two views may be given of this recital :—1. That 
the apostle adduced this list of worthies as examples of a steady 
faith in all that God had then revealed to man, and its happy 
consequences. 2. That he brought them up to prove that all 
the “elders” had faith in the Christ to come. Nor is this 
stronger view difficult to be made out, as we may trace in the 
eases of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, &c., a 
respect more or less immediate, to the leading object of all faith, 

the Messiah himself. 
Enough has been said to prove that the sacrifice of Abel was expiatory, and 

that it conformed, as an act of faith, to some anterior revelation. 


V. A divine origin must be ascribed to sacrifice. 

1. The evidence of Scripture is of sufficient clearness to establish the 
divine origin of the antediluvian sacrifices ; but, 

2. The argument drawn from the natural incongruity of sacrificial rites 
ought not to be overlooked: which is strong even as to the fruits of 
the earth, (the offering of which cannot be shown to originate either 
in reason or in sentiment,) (pp. 202-204,) and still stronger as to 
animal oblations. (P. 205.) 


The divine institution of expiatory sacrifice being thus carried up to the 
first ages, we perceive the unity of the three great dispensations of religion, 
the PATRIARCHAL, the LEVITICAL, and the CHRISTIAN, in the great prin 
ciple, “ that without the shedding of blood there is no remission.” 


(II.) BENEFITS OF THE ATONEMENT. (Ch. xxili-xxix.) 
A. JUSTIFICATION. (Ch. xxiii.) 

Preliminary. All natural and spiritual good must be included among the 
benefits derived to man from the atonement; but we shall now treat 
particularly of those which constitute what is called in Scripture man’s. 
SALVATION. . 


ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


The fruits of the death and intercession of Christ are— 
1. To render it consistent with a righteous government to forgive sin, 
2. To call forth the active exercise of the love of God to man, which dis 
plays itself 
(1.) In the variety of the divine dispensations. 
(2.) In the revelation of the divine will, and declaration of God’s pur 
poses of grace. . 

(3.5 Ir. the institution of the Christian ministry. 
(4.) In the influences of the Holy Spirit. 


The act of mercy by which man is reconciled to God, is called in the Scrip- 
tures, JUSTIFICATION. 


I. Statement of the Scriptural doctrine. 

1. Justification, the remission of sin, the non-imputation of sin, and the 
imputation of righteousness, are phrases of the same import: of 
which the following passages are proof:—Luke xviii, 13, 14; Acts 
xiii, 38, 39; Rom. ii, 25, 26; iv, 4, 8. 

2. The importance of maintaining this simple view of justification,—viz., 
that it is the remission of sins,—will appear from the following con- 
siderations :— 

(1.) We are taught that pardon of sin is not an act of prerogative, done 
above law; but a judicial process, done consistently with law. 

(2.) That justification has respect to particular individuals. 

(3.) Justification being a sentence of pardon, the Antinomian notion 
of eternal justification becomes a manifest absurdity. 

(4.) We are guarded, by this view of justification, against the notion that 
it is an act of God by which we are made actually just and righteous. 

(5.) No ground is afforded for the notion that justification imports the 
imputation to us of the active and passive righteousness of Christ, 
so as to make us both positively and relatively righteous. 


Il. Doctrine of imputation. (Pp, 215-243.) 


There are three opinions :— 

(L.) The high Calvinistic, or Antinomian scheme, which is, that “ Christ’s 
active righteousness is imputed unto us, as ours.” In answer to this 
we say, 

1. It is nowhere stated in Scripture. 

2. The notion here attached to Christ’s representing us, is wholly gra- 
tuitous. 

8. There is no weight in the argument, that “as our sins were ao- 
counted his, so his righteousness was accounted ours;” for our 
sins were never so accounted Christ’s, as that he did them. 

4. The doctrine involves a fiction and impossibility inconsistent with 
the divine attributes. 

5 The acts of Christ were of a loftier character than can be supposed 
capable of being the acts of mere creatures. 


REDEMPTION. ? fi 


6. Finally, and fatally, this doctrine shifts the meritorious cause of 
man’s justification from Christ’s “obedience unto death,” to Christ’s 
active obedience to the precepts of the law. Quotations are made 
in confirmation from Piscator and Goodwin. (Pp. 218-220.) 

(II.) The opinion of Calvin himself and many of his followers, adopted 
also by some Arminians. It differs from the first in not separating 
the active from the passive righteousness of Christ ; for such a dis- 
tinction would have been inconsistent with Calvin’s notion, that jus- 
tification is simply the remission of sins. (Pp. 221-223.) 

This view is adopted, with certain modifications, by Arminians and Wesley. 
(Pp. 223, 224.) 

But there is a manifest difference, (pp. 225-233,) which arises from the 
different senses in which the word imputation is used: the Arminian 
employing it in the sense of accounting to the believer the benefit 
of Christ’s righteousness: the Calvinist, in the sense of reckoning the 
righteousness of Christ as ours. A slight examination of the follow- 
ing passages will show that this notion has no foundation in Scrip- 
ture :-—Psalm xxxii, 1; Jer. xxiii, 6; Isa. xlv, 24; Rom. iii, 21, 22; 
1 Cor. i, 30; 2 Cor. v, 21; Rom. v, 18,19. In connexion with this 
last text, it is sometimes attempted to be shown that as Adam’s sin is 
imputed to his posterity, so Christ’s obedience is imputed unto those 
that are saved; but (Goodwin on Justification) 1.) The Seripture no- 
where affirms either the imputation of Adam’s sin to his posterity, or 
of the righteousness of Christ to those that believe. 2.) To impute 
sin, in Scripture phrase, is to charge the guilt of sin upon a man, 
with a purpose to punish him for it. And 3.) As to the imputation 
of Adam’s sin to his posterity,—if by it is meant simply that the guilt 
of Adam’s sin is charged upon his whole posterity, let it pass; but if 
the meaning be that all Adam’s posterity are made, by this imputa- 
tion, formally sinners, then the Scriptures do not justify it. 

(1I.) The imputation of faith for righteousness. (P. 234.) 

(a.) Proof of this doctrine. 

1. It is expressly taught in Scripture, Romans iv, 3-24, etc.; nor 1s 
faith used in these passages by metonymy for the object of faith, 
that is, the righteousness of Christ. 

2. The testimony of the church to this doctrine has been uniform 
from the earliest ages—Tertullian, Origen, Justin Martyr, &c. 
—down to the sixteenth century. (Pp. 236-239.) 

(b.) Explanation of the terms of the proposition, that “ faith is imputea 
for righteousness,” (Pp. 239-242.) 

(1.) Righteousness. ‘To be accounted righteous, is, in the style of the 
apostle Paul, to be justified, where there has been personal 
guilt. 

=.) Faith. It is not faith generally considered, that is imputed to 
us for righteousness, but faith (trust) in an atonement offered by - 
another in our behalf. 


ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


(3.) Imputation. The non-imputation of sin to a sinner is expressly 
called, “‘ the imputation of righteousness without works;” the im- 
putation of righteousness is, then, the non-punishment or par- 
don of sin; and by imputing faith for righteousness, the apostle 
means precisely the same thing. 

(c.) The objections to the doctrine of the imputation of faith for righte- 
ousness admit of easy answer. 

(1.) The Papists err in taking the term justification to signify tls 
making men morally just. - 

(2.) A second objection is, that if believing is imputed for righteous 
ness, then justification is by works, or by somewhat in our 
selves. In this objection, the term works is used in an equi- 
vocal sense. 

(3.) A third objection is, that this doctrine gives occasion to boasting. 
But 1.) This objection lies with equal strength against the. doc- 
trine of imputed righteousness. 2.) The faith itself is the gift 
of God. 3.) The blessings which follow faith are given in 
respect to the death of Christ. -4.) Paul says that boasting is ex- 
cluded by the law of faith. 


Ul. The nature of justifying faith; and its connexion with justification 
(Pp. 243-253.) | 


1. Faith is, 1) assent; 2) confidence; and this faith is the condition to 
which the promise of God annexes justification. 

2. Justification by faith alone is clearly the doctrine of Scripture. Some 
suppose this doctrine to be a peculiarity of Calvinism; but it has 
been maintained by various Arminian writers, and by none with 
more earnestness and vigour than by Mr. Wesley. (Pp. 246-248.) 

8. The general objection to this doctrine is, that it is unfavourable to 
morality. The proper answer to this old objection is, that although 
we are justified by faith alone, the faith by which we are justified is 
not alone in the heart which exercises it: “ faith is sola, yet not soli- 
taria.” Some colour is given to this objection by the Calvinistic 
view of final perseverance, which we disavow. 

4. Various errors have arisen from unnecessary attempts to guard this 
doctrine. (P. 250.) 

(1.) The Romish Church confounds justification and sanctification. 

(2.) Another opinion is, that justifying faith invludes works of evan: 
gelical obedience. 

(a.) The Scriptures put a plain distinction between faith and works 
(b.) It is not probable that Christ and his apostles meant more by 
this word than its fixed and usual import. 

(3.) A third notion,—that faith apprehends the inerits of Christ, to 
make up for ‘the deficiency of our imperfect obedience,—is suffi- 
ciently refuted by the fact, that no intimation of it is given ip 
Scripture. 


REDEMPTION. hu 


(4.) The last error referred to is that which represents faith as, per se, 
the necessary root of obedience. Perhaps those who use this Jan- 
guage do not generally intend to say all that it conveys. 


JV. A few theories on the subject of justification remain to be stated and 
examined. (Pp. 253-266.) 


(1.) The doctrine held by Bishop Taylor, Archbishop Tillotson, and 
others, that ‘regeneration is necessary to justification,” is an error 
whose source appears to be two-fold: (a) from a loose notion of the 
Scriptural doctrine of regeneration ; and (b) from confounding the 
change which repentance implies, with regeneration itself. 

2.) Another theory is that propounded by Bishop Bull, in his Harmonia 
Apostolica, which has taken deep root in the English Church: the 
doctrine being, that justification is by works ;—those works being 
such as proceed from faith, are done by the assistance of the Spirit, 
and are not meritorious. Instead of reconciling St. James to St. 
Paul, Bishop Bull takes the unusual course of reconciling St. Paul 
to St. James: but 

(a.) St. Paul treats the doctrine of justification professedly ; St. James 
incidentally. 

(b.) The two apostles are not addressing themselves to persons in the 
same circumstances, and hence do not engage in the same argu- 
ment. 

(c.) St. Paul and St. James do not use the term justification in the 
same sense. Lastly, the two apostles agree with each other upon 
the subject of faith and works. 

1,3.) A third theory is maintained by some of the leading divines of the 
English Church: which is, that men are justified by faith only, but 
that faith is mere assent to the truth of the gospel. The error of this 
scheme consists in the partial view which is taken of the nature of 
justifying faith. 

(4.) A fourth theory defers justification to the last day. In answer to 
this, we say, 

a.) It is not essential to pardon, that all its consequences should be im- 
mediately removed. 

b.) Acts of private and personal judgment are in no sense contrary toa 
general judgment. 

c.) Justification now, and at the last day, are not the same :—a.) They 
are not the same act. b.) They do not-proceed upon the same 
principle. . 

(o.) The last theory is that of collective justification, proposed by Dr. 
Taylor, of Norwich: which only needs to be stated, not refuted. 


B. ConcoMITANTS OF JUSTIFICATION. (Ch. xxiv.) 
L Regeneration is a change wrought in man by the Holy Spirit, by which 


hv 


1. 


2 


ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


the dominion of sin over him is broken, so that with free choice of will 

he serves God. 

Repentance is not regeneration, but precedes it. 

Regeneration is not justification, but always accompanies it. Which 
may be proved 

(1.) From the nature of justification itself. 

(2.) From Scripture-: “ If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.” 


II. Adoption is that act by which we who were enemies are made the sons 


Ww 


(1. 


(2-) 
1 


2. 


3. 


4. 


of God and heirs of his eternal glory; and is that state to which 
belongs freedom from a servile spirit, &. . . . with the Spirit of 
adoption, or the witness of the Spirit, by which means only we can 
know that the privileges of adoption are ours. The doctrine of the 
witness of the Spirit is clearly taught in the Epistles: it is sometimes 
called assurance, but as this phrase has‘ been abused, it should perhaps 
be cautiously employed. 

There are four opinions on the subject of this testimony of the Spirit. 


. That it is twofold :—1.) A direct testimony of the Spirit. 2.) An in 


direct testimony, arising from the work of the Spirit in the heart. 
That it is twofold, also :—1.) The fruits of the Spirit in the heart of the 
believer. 2.) The consciousness, on the part of the believer, of pos- 
sessing faith. 
That there is but one witness, the Holy Spirit, acting concurrently 
with our own spirits. 


. That there is a direct witness, which is the special privilege of a few 


favoured persons. 
Observations on these four opinions. (Pp. 273-280.) 


. All sober divines allow that Christians may attain comfortable per: 


suasions of the divine favour. 

By those who admit justification, it must be admitted that either this 
act of mercy must be kept secret from man, or there must. be some 
means of his knowing it: and if the former, there can be no comfort- 
able persuasion, &c.; but, on the contrary, Scripture declares that 
the justified ‘ rejoice.” 

If the Christian, then, may know that he is forgiven, how is this know- 
ledge to be attained? ‘The twofold testimony of the Spirit and heart 
declares it.. Romans viii, 16. 

But does the Holy Spirit give his testimony directly to the mind, or 
mediately by our own spirits, as Bishop Bull and Mr. Scott affirm ? 
To the latter doctrine we object,—that the witness is still that of our 
own spirit; and that but one witness is allowed, while St. Paul speaks 
of two. 


5. Neither the consciousness of genuine repentance, nor that of faith, is 


consciousness of adoption; and if nothing, more be afforded, the. evs 
dence of forgiveness is only that of mere inference. 
“But are not the fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, &c., sufficient 


EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT, lv 


proof of our adoption, without a more direct testimony?” Nay: 
these very fruits (at least love, joy, and: peace, which cannot be 
separated from the others) presuppose not only a pardon, but a 
clear persuasion of that. pardon. 


The witness of the Spirit is direct, then, and not mediate; nor is this a new 
éoctrine, as may be easily shown by quotations from Luther, Hooper, Andrew, 
Usher, Hooker, &c. The second testimony is that of our own spirits, not to 
the fact of our adoption directly, but. to the fact that we have, in truth, re- 
seived the Spirit of adoption, and that we are under no delusive impressions. 


(C.—ON THE EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT. 


(Ch. xxv-xxviil.) 


The Calvinistic controversy forms a clear case of appeal to the Scriptures, 
by whose light we propose to examine it. In regard to the extent of 
the atonement, 


I. Our proposition is, that Jesus Christ did so die for all men, as to make sal- 
vation attainable by al? men, (pp. 285—-288,) and we prove it by 
1. Passages which expressly declare the doctrine. 
(a.) Those which say that Christ died “ for all men,” and speak of his 
death as an atonement for the sins of the whole world. 
(b.) Those which attribute an equal extent to the death of Christ, as to 
the effects of the fall. 
2. Passages which necessarily imply the doctrine, viz. :— 
(a.) Those which declare that Christ died, not onty for those that are 
saved, but for those who do or may perish. 
(b.) Those which make it. the duty of men to believe the gospel; and 
place them under guilt, and the penalty of death, for rejecting it. 
(c.) Those in which men’s failure to obtain salvation is placed to the ac- 
count of their own opposing wills, and made wholly their own fault. 


[.. We. have to consider what our opponents have to urge against these plain 
statements of Scripture. In the first place, they have no text whatever 
to. adduce which declares that Christ. did not die for the salvation of 
all, as: literally as those which declare that. he did so die. They merely 
attempt to. explain away the force of the passages we have. adduced. 
Thus— 

1,. To our first class of texts they object that the terms, “all men,” and “ the 
world,” are sometimes used in Scripture in a limited sense. This may 
be granted; but the true question yet remains, whether in the above- 
cited passages they can be understood except in the largest sense. We 
deny this, 

(1.) Because the universal sense of the terms used is confirmed either 
by the context of the passages in which they occur, or by other 
Scriptures. . 


lvi ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


(2.) Nor can the phrases “ the world,” &c., be paraphrased as “ the world 
of the elect ;” for 

a) The elect are in Scripture distinguished from the world. 

b.) The common division of mankind in the New Testament, is into 
only two parts, viz., the disciples of Christ, and “ the world.” 

c.) When the redemption is spoken of, it often includes both those 
who had been chosen out of the world, and those who remained 
still of the world. . 

d.) In the general commission, “Go ye into all the world,” the expres- 
sion “ into” has its fullest latitude of meaning. 

e.) This restrictive interpretation gives gross absurdity to several pas- 
sages of Scripture. John iii, 16-18. (Pp. 291, 292.) 


2. To our second class of texts—those which imply the unrestricted extent 
of Christ’s death—certain qualifying answers are given. (Pp. 293- 
306.) Thus— 

(1.) As to those which speak of Christ having died for them that perish. 

a.) “ Destroy not him,” &c. Rom. xiv, 15. Poole’s paraphrase on this 
text, “for whom, in the judgment of charity, we may suppose 
Christ died,” completely counteracts the argument of the apostle. 
Scott, also, by explaining this as a “ caution against doing anything 
which has a tendency to destroy,” takes away, completely, the mo- 
tive on which the admonition is grounded. 

b.) “ Denying the Lord that bought them,” &c. 2 Peter ii, 1. The in- 
terpretations of Scott and Poole are evasions of the force of the 
text, which is, that their offence was aggravated by the fact of 
Christ having bought them. 

ec) The case of the apostates, Heb. vi, 4-8, and x, 26-31. Calvinists 
deny that the apostates referred to were ever true believers, or 
capable of becoming such. But, 

1. Paul did not hold out that to the Hebrews as a terror which he 
knew to be impossible. 

2. If these apostates never were believers, they could not be admo- 
nitory examples. 

3. To represent their case as a “falling away ”—if it had never been 
hopeful—was an absurdity of which Paul would not be guilty. 

4. But what the apostle affirms of their previous state, clearly shows 
that it had been a state of salvation. 

5. The Calvinistic interpretations are below the force of the terma 
employed; and they are above the character of reprobates. 

(2.) As to those which make it the duty of men to believe the gospel, 
and threaten them with punishment for not believing,—the Calvin- 
istic reply is, that it is the duty of all men to believe the gospel, 
whether they are interested in the death of Christ or not; and that 
they are guilty and deserving of punishment for not believing. (P. 
801.) But if Christ died not for all such persons, we think it plain 


EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT. * |vu 


that it cannot be their duty to believe the gospel; and to settle this 
point, we must determine what is meant by believing the gospel. 
The faith which the gospel requires of all, is, “ trust in our Lord 
Jesus Christ :” true faith, then, and not merely assent, is implied in 
believing the gospel. But of those for whom Christ did not die, such 
faith cannot be required ; for, 

1. It is impossible. 

2. God could not command what he never intended. 

3 What all are bound to believe in, is true. 

(3.) As to the last class of texts, viz., those which impute the blame and 
fault of their non-salvation to men themselves, the common reply is, 
that if men willed to come to Christ, they would have life; (p. 
303 ;) but, 

1. Put the question to the non-elect; and either it is possible for them 
to come to Christ, or it is not: if the former, then they may come 
to Christ without receiving salvation ; if the latter, then the bar to 
their salvation is not in themselves. 

%. The argument from this class of texts is not exhausted; for they 
expressly exclude God from all participation in the destruction of 
sinners. ‘“ God willeth all men to be saved,” &c. Texts which 
gave rise to the ancient notion of a secret and revealed will of 
God: a subterfuge to which perhaps few Calvinists in the present 
day are disposed to resort. 


EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT—CONTINUED. (Ch. xxvi.) 


As the Calvinists have no direct texts in support of their doctrine, they re- 
sort mainly to implication and inference. The words election, calling, 
and foreknowledge, are much relied upon in their arguments. We 
shall now proceed to examine the Scriptural meaning of them. 


1 Exsection. Three kinds of election are mentioned in Scripture. 


(1.) That of individuals to perform some special service: e. g., Cyrus was 
clected to rebuild the temple; Paul, to be the apostle of the Gentiles. 


II.) Collective election. (1’p. 308-337.) re 
(a) Explanation of its use in Scripture. 
1. Of the Jews, as the chosen people of God. (P. 308.) 
2. Of the calling of believers in all nations to be in reality what the 
Jews had been typically (Pp. 308-310.) ; 
(b.) Inquiry as to its effect upon the extent of the atonement. 
1. With respect to the ancient election of the Jewish church. 
(15 That election did not secure the salvation of every Jew in- 
dividually. 
(2.) Sufficient means of salvation were left to the non-elect Gentiles. - 
(3.) Nay, the election of the Jews was intended for the benefit of 
the Gentiles—to restrain idolatry and diffuse spiritual truth. 


Vor. L—E, 


Ivili 


ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


2. With respect to the election of the Christian Church. 

(1.) That election does not infallibly secure the salvation of the 
Christian. 

(2.) It concludes nothing against the salvability of those who are not 
in the church. 

(3.) Christians are thus elected, not in consequence of, or in order 
to, the exclusion of others; but for the benefit of others as well 
as themselves. 

(c.) Collective election is frequently confounded with personal election, 
by Calvinistic commentators, especially in their expositions of 


Paut’s Discourse. Romans ix-xi. (Pp. 312-337.) 


1 Which we shall examine, first, to determine whether personal or col- 

lective election be the subject of it. (Pp. 312-325.) 

(1.) The exclusion of the Jew is the first topic: the righteousnese of 
which exclusion Paul vindicates against the objections raised in 
the minds of the Jews. 

a.) By showing that God had limited the covenant toa part of the 
descendants of Abraham: (1.) In the case of the descendants 
of Jacob himself. (2.) From Jacob he ascends to Abraham, 
v. 7. (3.) The instance of Isaac’s children, v. 10-13. On the 
passage, “ Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated,” which 
has often been perverted, we remark: 1. The apostle is here 
speaking of “ the seed,” intended in the promise. 2. This is 
proved by Gen. xxv, 23: “ Two nations are in thy womb,” ete. 
3. Instances of individual reprobaticn would have been imperti- 
nent to the apostle’s purpose. 

b.) By asking the objecting Jews to say whether in these instances 
there was a failure of God’s covenant with Abraham, (p. 314,) 
he expressly denies any unrighteousness in them. But those 
who would interpret these passages as referring to personal un- 
conditional election and reprobation, are bound to show how 
they could be righteous. (P. 315.) 

c.) By the statement, “ So then, it is not of him that willeth,” ete.— 
containing a beautiful allusion to the case of Isaac and Esau. 

(2.) The next point of the discourse is, to show that God exercises the 
prerogative of making some notorious sinners the special objects of 
his displeasure. (P. 316.) Here again the example is taken from 
the Jewish Scriptures; but observe, it is not Ishmael or Esau, 
but Pharaoh, a Gentile, who was a most appropriate example to 
illustrate the case of the body of the unbelieving Jews, who were, 
when the apostle wrote, under the sentence of a terrible excision. 

(8.) In verse nineteen the Jew is again introduced as an objector: 
“ Why doth he yet find fault ?” &. (P. 317.) 

(a.) This objection, and the apostle’s reply, are usually interpreted 


EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT. lix 


as inculcating upon nations visited with penal inflictions, the 
impropriety of debating the case with God. This sie tae 
is hardly satisfactory ; for, 

1. What end is answered by teaching a hopeless people not to “ re- 
ply against God ?” 

2. If this be the meaning, the apostle’s allusion to the parable of 
the prophet, Jer., chap. xviii, is inappropriate; as that parable 
supposes the time of trial, as to such nations, to be not yet 
past. 

3. “ Dishonour” is not destruction ; no potter makes a vessel on 
purpose to destroy it. (P. 318.) 

4, This interpretation supposes that the body of the Jewish nation 
had arrived already at a state of dereliction, which is not 

the case. 

(b.) A different view of this part of Paul’s discourse is presented. 
(P. 319.) The objection of the Jew goes upon the ground of 
predestination, which is refuted, not conceded, by the apostle, 
as follows :-— 

1. The “ vessel” was not made “unto dishonour,” until the clay 
had been “marred :” i. e., the Jews were not dishonoured 
until they had failed to conform with the design ot God. 

2. Jeremiah, interpreting the parable, represents the “ disho- 
noured” as within the reach of the divine favour upon 
repentance. 

8 What follows verse twenty-two, serves still further to silence 
the objector. The temporal punishment of the Jews in Judea 
is alluded to by the apostle, as a proof both of sovereignty 
and justice ; but that punishment does not preclude the salva- 
bility of the race. (P. 321.) 

(c.) The metaphor of “ vessels” is still employed; but by “ vessels 
of dishonour,” and “ vessels of wrath,” the apostle means vessels 
in different conditions. The first, being part of the prophecy 
which signified the dishonoured state in which the Jews, for 
punishment and correction, were placed under captivity in 
Babylon : the second, with reference to the prophecy in nine- 
teenth Jeremiah, had relation to the coming destruction of the 
temple, city, and polity of the Jews, by the Romans. There 
could be no complaint of injustice or unrighteousness, in regard 
to this destruction ; for, 

1, It was brought upon themselves by their own sins. (P. 324.) 

2. Moreover, these vessels (adapted to destruction by their own 
sins) were endured with much long-suffering. 


The tenth and eleventh chapters contain nothing but what refers to the 
collective rejection of the Jewish nation, and the collective election of all believ-, 
ing Jews and Gentiles into the visible Church of God. ‘The discourse, then 
can only be interpreted of collective election ; and we now proceed, 


ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


i. To examine it secondly, with reference to the question of unconditional 
election, that is, an election of persons to eternal life without respect 

. to their faith or obedience. (Pp. 326-337.) Such election finds no 

place in this chapter, though there are several instances of uncon- » 

ditional election ; but we deny that the spiritual blessings of piety 
spring necessarily from it, or that unbelief and ruin follow in lika 
manner non-election. The discourse abundantly refutes such opirr 

ions. (P. 327.) 

(1.) The descendants of Abraham in the line of Isaac and Jacob were 
elected, but true faith and salvation did not follow as infallible 
consequents. So were the Gentiles at length elected, but obedi- 
ence and salvation did not necessarily follow. 

(2.) The cases of non-election or rejection were not infallibly followed 
by unbelief, disobedience, and punishment: e. g., the Ishmaelites 
—the Edomites—the rejected Jews in the apostolic age. (Pp. 
328, 329.) 

(3.) The only argument of any weight, for the ground that individuals 
are intended in this discourse, is, that as none are acknowledged 
to be the true church but true believers, therefore individual 
election to eternal life must necessarily be included in the notion 
of collective election; and that true believers only, under both 
the old and new dispensations, constituted the “ election”—the 
“remnant according to the election of grace.” (P. 330.) In this 
argument there is much error. 

1. It is a mere assumption, that the spiritual Israelites, in opposition 
to Israelites by birth, are anywhere called the “election,” or 
the “ remnant,” &c. 

2. It is not true, that under the old dispensation the election of which 
the apostle speaks was confined to the spiritual seed of Abra- 
ham: e. g., case of Esau and Jacob and their descendants. 

3. This notion is often grounded on a mistaken view of verses 6—9 
in this chapter: the view, namely, that in this passage Paul dis- 
tinguishes between the spiritual Israelites and those of natural 
descent; while the fact is, that he distinguishes between the 
descendants of Abraham in a certain line, and his other de- 
scendants. 

4. Though we grant that the election of bodies of men to church 
privileges involves the election of individuals into the true 
church,—still this last, as Scripture plainly testifies, is nat un- 
conditional, as the former ts, but depends upon their repentance 
and faith. 


We have thus shown that the apostle treats of unconditional collective 


election, but not. of unconditional individual election. 


(11.) The third kind of election is personal election, or the choice of indi 
viduals to be the heirs of eternal life. (P. 337.) 


ci 
EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT. lxi 


a.) It is not denied that true believers are styled in Scripture the “ elect 
of God ;” but the question arises, What is the import of that act of 
grace which is termed “an election?” We find it explained in two 
clear passages of Scripture. To be elected, is to be separated from 
“the world,” and to be “sanctified by the Spirit, and by the blood 
of Christ;” hence, election is not only an act done in time, but sub- 
sequent to the administration of the means of salvation. 

b.) The Calvinistic doctrine, that God hath from eternity chosen unto 
salvation a set number of men wnio faith and final salvation, pre- 
sents a different aspect, and requires an appeal to the Word of God. 
It has two parts: 1. The choosing of a determinate number of men, 
and, 2. That this election is unconditional. (P. 338.) 

A. As to the choosing of a determinate number of men, it is allowed 
by Calvinists that they have no express Scriptural evidence for 
this tenet. And 

(1.) As to God’s eternal purpose to elect, we know nothing except 
from revelation; and that declares, (a) that he willeth a// men 
to be saved: (b) that Christ died for al/ men, in order to 
the salvation of all: and (c) the decree of God is, “He that 
believeth shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be 
damned ;” and if God be unchangeable, this must have been his 
decree from all eternity: (d) if the fault of men’s destruction 
lies in themselves—as we have proved—then the number of the 
elect is capable of increase and diminution. 

This doctrine necessarily carries with it that of the unconditional 

reprobation of all mankind except the elect, which cannot be 

reconciled, (a) with the love of God; (b) with the wisdom of 

God; (c) with the grace of God; (d) with the compassion of 

God ; (e) with the justice of God; (f) with the sincerity of God ; 

g) with the Scriptural doctrine that God is no respecter of 
persons; (h) with the Scriptural doctrine of the eternal salvation 
of infants; (i) and, finally, with the proper end of punitive 
justice. 

B. We consider now the second branch of this doctrine, viz., that per- 
sonal election is unconditional. (P. 345.) 

(1.) According to this doctrine, the Church of God is constituted on 
the sole principle of the divine purpose, not upon the basis 
of faith and obedience, which manifestly contradicts the Word 
of God. 

(2.) This doctrine of election without respect to faith contradicts the 
history of the commencement and first constitution of the Church 
of Christ. 

(3.) There is no such doctrine in Scripture as the election of indi- 
viduals unto faith; and it is inconsistent with several passages 
which speak expressly of personal election : e. g., John xv, 19; 
1 Peter i, 2; 2 Thess. ii, 13, 14. (Pp. 347, 348.) 


iy 


nN 


° 
Ixii ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


(4.) There is another class of texts, referring to believers, not indi- 
vidually, but as a body forming the Church of Christ, which 
texts, containing the word election, are ingeniously or perversely 
applied by Calvinists to the support of their doctrine, when in 
fact they do not contain it. Such is Eph. i, 4-6. Now in re- 
gard to this text, it might be shown, (a) that if personal election 
were contained in it, the choice spoken of is not of men merely, 
but of believing men; but (b) it does not contain, the doctrine 
of personal election, but that of the eternal purpose of God to 
constitute his visible church no longer upon the ground of de- 

_ scent from Abraham, but on that of faith un Christ. 

(5.) Finally, the Calvinistic doctrine has no stronger passage to lean 
upon. (P. 351.) We conclude by asking, if this doctrine be 
true, (a.) Why are we commanded “to make our election sure ?” 
(b.) Where does Scripture tell us of elect unbelievers? (c.) 
And how can the Spirit of truth convince such of sin and danger 
when they are, in fact, in no danger ? 


Il. Having thus considered election, we come now to examine those texts 
which speak of the calling and predestination of believers. 


(1.) The words “ call” and “ calling” occur frequently in the New Testa- 
ment.. The parable in Matthew xxii, 1-14, seems to have given rise 
to many of these; and a clear interpretation of it will explain the use 
of the phrase in most other passages. 

a.) Three classes of persons are called in the parable. (1.) The disobe- 
dient persons who made light of the call. (2.) Those embraced in 
the class of “ destitute of the wedding garment.” (3.) The approved 
guests. 

b.) As to the call itself. (1.) The three classes are on an equality. (2.) 
No irresistible influence is employed. (3.) They are called into a 
company, or society, before which the banquet is spread. 

These views explain the passages in which the term is used in the ¢ pis- 
tles: in none of them is the exclusive calling of any set number of 
men contained. 


(II.) The Synod of Dort attempt (p. 355) to reason the doctrine from Ro- 
mans viii, 30. But this passage says nothing of a “ set and determinate 
number of men.” It treats indeed of the privileges and hopes of be- 
lievers, but not as secured to them by any such decree as the Synod 
of Dort advocates ; for, 

(1.) The matter would have been out of place in St. Paul’s lofty con. 
clusion of his high argument on justification by faith. 

(2.) The context relieves the text of the appearance of favouring the 
doctrine. 

(3.) The apostle does mdeed speak of the foreknowledge of believers, 


EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT, )xili 


taken distributively and personally, to church privileges; but this 
strengthens our argument against the use of the passage made by 
the Synod of Dort; for 1. Foreknowledge may be simple approval, 
as in Romans xi, 2; and 2. If it be taken in this passage in the sense 
of simple prescience, it will come to the same issue ; for believers, if 
foreknown at all, in any other sense than all men are foreknown, 
must have been foreknown as Uelievers. 

(4.) As to the predestination spoken of in the text, the way is now clear : 
the foreknown believers were predestinated, called, justified, and 
glorified. 


EXAMINATION OF CERTAIN PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE SUPPOSED TO 
LIMIT THE EXTENT OF CHRIST’S REDEMPTION. (Ch. xxvii.) 


« John vi, 37: “ All that the Father giveth to me shall come to me; and 
him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out.” The Calvinistic view 
of this text is, that a certain number were “given” to Christ; and as 
none others can come to him, the doctrine of distinguishing grace is es- 
tablished. 

(1.) Our first objection to this view is, that Christ placed the reason of the 
Jews’ not coming, in themselves. John v, 38, 40, 44, 46. 

(2.) The phrase, “ to be given” by the Father to Christ, is abundantly ex- 
plained by the context. 


2. Matthew xx, 15,16. The Calvinistic view here is, that God has a right, 
on the principle of pure sovereignty, to afford grace to some, and to 
leave others to perish in their sins. The fact that this passage is the con- 
clusion of the parable of the vineyard, is sufficient refutation of the in- 
terpretation. 


5. 2 Timothy ii, 19. This text bears no friendly aspect toward Calvinism. 


4. John x, 26: “ But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I 
said unto you.” It is a sufficient reply to the Calvinistic view of this 
text, to state that men are called “the sheep of Christ” in regard to their 
qualities and acts, and not with reference to any supposed transaction 
between the Father and Christ. 


5 John xiii, 18. The term “know” in this text is evidently used in the sense 
of discriminating character. 


6. John xv,16. The word “ chosen” in this text is gratuitously interpreted 
(by Calvinists) as relating to an eternal election ; but Christ had “ chosen 
them out of the world,” which must have been done in time. 


7. 2 Timothy i, 9: “‘ Who hath saved us, and called us with a holy calling,” 
&e. No personal election spoken of here. The parallel passage, Eph. 
iii, 4 -6, shows that the apostle was speaking of the divine purpose to form, 
the church out of both Jews and Gentiles. 


Ixiv ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


8. Acts xiii, 48: “ And as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.” 

(1.) If the Gentiles, who believed, only did so because they were “ ordained * 
so to do, then the Jews, who believed not, were not guilty, as it is af: 
firmed, of PUTTING THE WORD AWAY from them. 

(2.) The Calvinistic view carries with it the notion that all the <lect Gen- 
tiles at Antioch believed at once, and that no more remained to be con- 
verted. 

(3.) Some Calvinists render the words “determined,” or “ordered,” for 
eternal life. 

(4.) In no place in the New Testament where the same word occurs, 1s it 
ever employed to convey the meaning of destiny, or predestination. 


9. Luke x, 20. Our Calvinistic friends forget, in interpreting this text, that 
names may be “ blotted out of the book of life.” 


10. Prov. xvi, 4. The true meaning is, that God renders even those who 
have made themselves wicked, the means of glorifying his justice in 
their punishment. 


11. John xii, 37-40. Quotation from Isaiah. In examining this passage, we 
find, 

(1.) That it does not affirm that the eyes of the Jew should be blinded by 
a divine agency, as Mr. Scott and the Calvinists assume. In every 
view of the passage, the responsible agent is “THIS PEOPLE ”—the 
perverse and obstinate Jews themselves. 

(2.) A simple prophecy is not a declaration of purpose at all; but the de- 
claration of a future event. 

(3.) Even admitting the Calvinistic view of this passage, it would afford no 
proof of general election and reprobation, since it has application to 
the unbelieving part of the Jews only. 


12. Jude 4. These certain men had been foretold in the Scriptures, or theit 
punishment predicted. There is nothing here of eternal purpose. 


13. 1 Cor. iv, 7: “ For who maketh thee to differ from another?” A fa- 
vourite argument with Calvinists is founded on this text; and a dilemma 
raised on the supposition of gospel offers being made to two men, why 
one accepts and the other rejects? ‘They answer that election alone 
solves the question. But, 

‘1’ Put the question as to one man, at two different periods ;—and elec- 
tion will not solve this difficulty: of course, then, it will not solve the 
other. 

(2.) The question of the apostle has reference to gifts and endowments, not 
to a ulfference in religious state. 

8.) Following out their view, the doctrine would follow, that sufficiency 
of grace is denied to the wicked,—which would remove all their 
responsibility. 


EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT. os 


14. Acts xviii, 9,10: . . . for I have much people in this city.” This 
may mean, either that there were many devout people in the city, or 
that there would be many subsequently converted there. 


THEORIES WHICH LIMIT THE EXTENT OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST 
(Ch. xxviii.) 
We shall notice in this chapter the doctrines of predestination, etc. 


I As stated by Calvin himself, and by Calvinistic theologians and churckes. 
(Pp. 381-410.) 


(1) Calvin. 
1. Statement of his opinions, from the “ Institutes.” (Pp. 381, 382.) 
°, His answers to objections shown to be weak and futile, (pp. 383, 
384,) e. g., 

a.) The objection that the system is unjust: which he answers by as 
serting that it is the will of God: thus making four evasions—1, 
itp ig: 

b.) The objection that if corruption is the cause of man’s destruction, 
the corruption itself was an effect of the divine decree: which he 
answers by referring again to the sovereign will of God. (P. 384.) 

8. His attempts to reconcile his doctrine with man’s demerit, and to relieve 
it of the charge of making God the author of sin, shown to be feeble 
and contradictory. (Pp. 385-387.) 

4, His system not reducable to sublapsarianism. (P. 388.) 

5. His tenets shown to be in opposition to the doctrines of the first ages. 
(P. 389.) 

6. Their history from the time of Augustine to Calvin. (P. 390.) 


(IL) Calvinistic theologians and churches. 
1. Three leading theories prevalent among the reformed churches prior 
to the Synod of Dort. 

a.) Supralapsarian. (1.) Decree: to save certain men by grace, and 
to condemn others by justice. (2.) Means: creation of Adam, 
and ordination of sin. (3.) Operation: irresistible grace, pro- 
ducing faith and final salvation. (4.) Result: that reprobates have 
no grace, and no capacity of believing and of being saved. (Pp 
391, 392.) 


b.) Also supralapsarian, but differing somewhat from (a.), viz., that it 
does not lay down the creation or the fall as a mediate cause, fore- 
ordained of God for the execution of the decree of reprobation ; 
but yet Arminius shows that, according to this view, the fall is a 
necessary means for its exercise, and thus God is made the author 
of sin. (Pp. 392, 393.) 

ce.) Sublapsarian. In which man, as the objec of predestination, is - 
considered as fallen. 


1XV1 ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


(1.) Statement of the doctrine. Its basis is, that the whole human 
race are liable to eternal death in consequence of Adam’s trans- 
gression. 

(2.) Refutation. ‘“ The wages of sin is death,” but “sin is the trans- 
gression of the law.” 

1. If the race be contemplated as contained seminally in Adam, 
then the whole race would have perished in Adam, without 
the vouchsafement of mercy to any. 

2. If contemplated as to have not only a potential but a real exist. 
ence, then the doctrine is, that every man of the race is ab- 
solutely liable to eternal death for the sin of Adam, to which 
he was not a consenting party. 

8. If the foreknowledge of actual transgression be contemplated 
by the decree, then the actual sins of men are either evitable 
or necessary: if the former, then reprobates may be saved; 
if the latter, none are responsible. 

4. It is alleged that Paul represents all men under condemnation 
to eternal death in consequence of their connexion with the 
first Adam ; but, (p. 397,) 

a.) In the gospel “this is the condemnation, that men love dark- 
ness rather than light.” Hence the previous state of con- 
demnation was not unalterable. 

b.) In Scripture, final condemnation is always placed upon the 
ground of actual sin. 

c.) The true sense of the apostle in Rom. v, is to be obtained 
from a careful examination of the entire argument. He is 
not representing, as Calvinists have it, the condition in 
which the human race would have been if Christ had not 
interposed, but its actual condition, both in consequence of 
the fall of man and the intervention of Christ. (Pp. 398- 
400.) 

2. Decisions of the Synod of Dort: from Scott’s translation of the “ Judg- 
ment of the Synod,” &c., read in the great church at Dort, in 1619. 

By extracts from Acts i, 1, 4-6, 10, and 15, it is clear that Dr. Heylin 
gave a true summary of the eighteen articles on predestination, in 
the following words :—“ That God, by an absolute decree, hath 
elected to salvation a very small number of men, without any regard 
to their faith and obedience whatsoever; and excluded from saving 
grace all the rest of mankind, and appointed them by the same de- 
cree to eternal damnation, without any regard to their infidelity and 
impenitency.” (Pp. 401-407.) 

8. The Church of Scotland expresses its doctrine on these topics in the 
answers to the 12th and 13th questions of its large catechism; in 
which there appears a strict conformity to the doctrines of Calvin. 

4. The Church of the Vaudois, in Piedmont, by the Confession of A. D 
1120, establish the doctrine that Christ died for the salvation of the 


EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT. Ixvii 


whole world ; but in the seventeenth century pastors were introduced 
from Geneva, and the Con‘ession of 1655 embraces the doctrine and 
almost the very words of Calvin on this point. 

5. The French Churches, in their Confession of 1558, declare Calvinistic 
sentiments, but the expressions are guarded and careful. 

6. The Westminster Confession gives the sentiments of the English Pres- 
byterian Churches, and of the Church of Scotland. In chapter iii, 
the doctrine of predestination is advanced in conformity with the 
most unmitigated parts of Calvin’s Institutes. 


IL As held in certain modifications of the Calvinistic scheme. (Pp. 410-422.) 


(I.) Baxterianism ; advanced by Richard Baxter, in his treatise of Universal 
Redemption, and in his Methodus Theologie ; but derived from the 
writings of Camero, and defended by Amyraut and others. 

1. It differs from High Calvinism, as to the doctrine of' satisfaction: as 
the system explicitly asserts that Christ made satisfaction by his death 
equally for the sins of every man. Baxter draws many “ absurd con- 
sequents from the doctrine which denieth universal satisfaction.” 
(Pp. 413-416.) 

2. But from an examination of his entire scheme, it amounts only to this, 
—that although a conditional satisfaction has been purchased by 
Christ for all men, yet Christ has not purchased for all men the 
power of performing the required condition of salvation. Baxter 
gives to the elect irresistible effectual grace ; but to others sufficient 
grace, which is called by himself, aptly enough, “ sufficient ineffectual 
grace.’ He admits that all men may have grace to bring them 
nearer Christ; but coming nearer to Christ, and nearer to saving 
faith, are with him quite distinct. His concern seems to be, to show, 
not how the non-elect might be saved, but how they might with some 
plausibility be damned. Quotations from Curcelleus, Dr. Womack, 
and Maclaine, are in point. (Pp. 417-421.) 


(11.) Dr. Williams’s scheme is in substance the same as the theory of supra- 
lapsarian reprobation. In all other mitigated schemes, the “sufficiency 
of grace” is understood in Baxter’s sense. The labour of all these 
theories is to find out some pretext for punishing those that perish, 
independent of the Scriptural reason, the rejection of a mercy free 
for all. 


OL As to their origin. They seem to have arisen, not from a careful exami- 
nation of Scripture, but from metaphysical subtleties, for by these they 
have at all times been chiefly supported. 


C1.) Eternal decrees. 
1. This term is nowhere employed in Scripture: its signification, (if it be 


s 


Ixviil ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


used at all,) must be controlled by Scripture. The decrees of God 
can only Scripturally signify the determination of his will in his 
government of the world he has made. 

2 These decrees are, in Scripture, referred to two classes: (1) a deter: 
mination to do certain things; and (2) a determinaticn to permit 
certain things to be done by free and accountable creatures. This 
last does not involve the consequence of making God the author of 
sin. 

8. That many of the divine decrees are conditional we have the testimony of 
Scripture, which abounds with examples of decrees to which con li- 
tions are annexed. We have also instances, as in the case of Eli, 
of the revocation of the divine decrees. (Pp. 425-428.) 


(II.) The prescience of God. 

* The Calvinistic popular argument is, that as the final condition of 
every man is foreseen, it must be certain, and therefore inevitable 
and necessary. The answer is, that certainty and necessity are two 
perfectly distinct predicaments,—as certainty exists in the mind fore- 
seeing, but necessity qualifies the action foreseen. 

2. The scholastic argument. 

(a.) The schoolmen distinguish between (1.) Scientia indefinita, the- 
knowledge of possible things, and (2.) Scientia visionis, the know- 
ledge which God has of all real existences; to which the anti- 
predestinarians added (3.) Scientia media, to express God’s know- 
ledge of the actions of free agents, and the divine acts consequent 
upon them. 

(b.) Absolute predestination is identified with scientia visionis by the 
Calvinists: illustrated by an extract from Hill’s Lectures. (P. 481.) 

The sophistry of Dr. Hill’s statement lies in this, that the determina- 
tion of the divine will to produce the universe is made to include 
a determination “to produce the whole series of beings and 
events that were then future :” while among the “ beings” to be 
produced were some endowed with free will. If this be denied, 
then man is not accountable for his personal offences: if al- 
lowed, then his (say) sinful acts cannot have been determined 
in the same manner by the divine will, as the production of the 
universe and the beings which composed it. 


(IL) The human will. (P. 435.) 

1. Calvinists find it necessary to the consistency of their theory that the 
volitions, as well as the acts, of man should be placed in bondage ; 
and their doctrine fairly stated is, that the will is determined to one 
class of objects, no other being possible. The Scriptural doctrine is, 
that, by the grace of God, man—who without that grace would. be 
morally incapable of choosing anything but evil—is endowed with 
the power of choosing good. (P. 436.) 


EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT. (X1x 


2. More moderate Calvinists contend that transgressors are responsible 
for their evil acts, because they are done willingly, although ther 
will could not but choose them. We reply, that this is only the case 
where the time of trial is past, as in devils and apostates; and then 
only because these are personally guilty of having vitiated their own 
wills: but the case is different as to probationers ; for, 

(1.) It is decided by the Word of God, that men who perish might 
have “ chosen life.” (P. 438.) 

»(2.) The natural reason of mankind is in direct opposition to the doc- 
trine. (P. 439.) | 

3. The metaphysical doctrine is, that the will is swayed by motives which 
arise from circumstances beyond the control of man; but, (p. 439,) 

(1.) This still leaves us in the difficulty, that men are bound by a 
chain of events established by an almighty power. 

(2.) The doctrine is contradicted by the language of men in all coun- 
tries and ages. 

(3.) We deny the necessary connexion between motive and volition. 
That the mind acts generally under the influence of motives may 
be granted, but that it is operated upon by them necessarily, is 
contradicted, 

(a.) By the fact of our often acting under the weakest reason, which 
is the character of all sins against judgment; and, 

(b.) By the fact that we have power to displace one motive by 
another, and to control those circumstances from which motives 
flow. 


(IV.) The divine sovereignty. (P. 422.) 

The Calvinistic doctrine is, that God does what he wills, only because he 
wills it. But it can be shown from Scripture, that the acts of the 
divine will are under the direction of the divine wisdom, goodness, 
and justice. 


(V.) The case of heathen nations is sometimes referred to by Calvinists as 
presenting equal difficulties to those urged against election and repro- 
bation. But the cases are not parallel, unless it be granted that 
heathen, as such, are excluded from heaven. (P. 444.) 

1. Heathen are bad enough, but the question is not what they are, but 
what they might be: they are under the patriarchal dispensation , 
and 

2. St. Paul affirms that the divine law has not perished from among them, 
but that if they live up to the light which they possess they may be 
saved. 


(VI.) Irresistible grace. We admit that man, in his simply natural state, is 
insufficient of himself to think or do anything of a saving tendency ; 
and that when the Holy Spirit is vouchsafed, we are often entirely pas- 
sive in the first instance; but we contend that the grace of God has 


Ixx ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


been bestowed upon all men, inasmuch as all are required to do those 
things which have a saving tendency. ‘These premises 
1. Establish the justice of God in the condemnation of men, and 
2. Secure the glory of our salvation to the grace of God. (P. 448.) 


4 


(D.—FURTHER BENEFITS OF REDEMPTION. (Ch. xxix.) 


I Entire sanctification of believers. That there is a distinction between a re- 
- generate state and a state of perfect holiness, is sufficiently proved by the 
exhortations to believers in 1 Thess. v, 23, and 2 Cor. vii. 1. 


1. The time when we are to expect this blessing has been disputed. It is 
admitted that the soul must be entirely cleansed before it can pass into 
heaven, but many contend that the final stroke to corruption can only 
be given at death; but 

(1.) The promise of sanctification is nowhere restricted in Scripture to 
the article of death. - 

(2.) The soul’s union with the body is nowhere represented as a 1ecessary 
obstacle to its entire sanctification. Romans vii, has indeed been ad- 
duced in proof of this, but it is clear that the apostle is giving the 
experience of one yet under the law, and not in a state of deliverance 
by Christ. 

(3.) This doctrine is disproved by those passages which connect sanctifi- 
cation with the subsequent exhibition of its fruits in life. 

(4.) It is disproved, also, by all those passages which require us to bring 
forth the fruits of the Spirit; for these are required of us in perfec- 
tion and maturity, and necessarily suppose the entire sanctification 
of the soul from the opposite and antagonist evils. 

(5.). This doctrine involves other antiscriptural consequences :—that the 
seat of sin is in the flesh; and that the flesh must not only lust against 
the spirit, but on many occasions be the conqueror. 

We conclude, then, that as sanctification can neither be referred to the 
hour of death, nor placed subsequently to this life, it is an attainment 
to which believers are called during this life, 


2. The manner of sanctification. It. may be, (1) gradual, or (2) instantaneous. 


8. Objections to this doctrine. 

(1.) It supposes future impeccability. Nay: the angels sinned, and so 

_ did our first parents. 

(2.) It renders the atonement and intercession of Christ superfluous. 
Nay: for this state of sanctification is maintained by the constant in- 
fluences of the Holy Spirit, vouchsafed through Christ’s intercession. 

(3.) It shuts out the use of the prayer, “ Forgive us our trespasses.” But, 
a) this prayer is designed for men in a mixed condition. b) All sin 
must not be continued, in order that this prayer may be employed. 


FURTHER BENEFITS OF REDEMPTION. )xx1 


And c) The defects and infirmities of a being naturally imperfect, 
are not inconsistent with moral holiaess 


II. The right to pray is another benefit which accrues to believers; and 80 is 
Ill The special providence of God. 
IV Victory over death is also awarded to them. 


V The immediate reception of the soul into a state of blessedness. “ The sacred 
writers proceed on the supposition that the soul and the body are naturally 
distinct and separable, and that the soul is susceptible of pain or pleasure 
during that separation.” Quotation from Campbell. 


VI. Resurrection of the body. ‘There is some dispute in regard to this doctrine 
—whether it implies a resurrection of the substance of the body, or of a 
minute and indestructible germ. 


1. The only passage of Scripture which seems to favour the germ theory is 
1 Cor. xv, 35: “ How are the dead raised up ? and with what body do 
they come ?”” ‘These two questions both imply a doubt as ¢o the fact, 
not an inquiry as to the modus agendi; and the apostle answers them 
by showing, in answer to the jirst question, that there is nothing in- 
credible in i the thing ; and in answer to the second, that the doctrine 
of our reunion with the body implies nothing contrary to the hopes of 
liberation from the “ burden of this flesh,” because of the glorified 
qualities which God is able to give to matter. (P. 463.) 


2. There are several difficulties connected with this theory ; for on its hy- 
pothesis 
(1.) There is no resurrection of the body; for the germ cannot be called 
the body. 
(2.) There is no resurrection from death at all, but a vegetation from a 
secret principle of life. 
(3.) It is substantially the same with the pagan doctrine of metempsy- 
chosis. 


An objection to the resurrection of the body has been drawn from the 
thanges of its substance during life. This does not affect the doctrine, that 
the body which is laid in the grave shall be raised up. “ But,” we are told, 
* the same bodies that sin may not be punished.” We answer, that the soul 
is the only rewardable subject—the body is its instrument. 


PA Kote Tl Hotei): 


MORALS OF CHRISTIANITY. 


OUTLINE. 
C1.) The moral law. (Ch. i.) 
(II.) The duties we owe to God. (Ch. ii, iii. 
(III.) Duties to our neighbour. (Ch. iv.) 


(I.) THE MORAL LAW. (Ch. i) 


Preliminary observations :— 
(1.) The morals of the New Testament are not presented to us in the form 
of a regular code. 


(2.) The divine authority of the Old Testament is everywhere presupposed. 


I. The moral laws of the Old Testament pass into the Christian code. (Pp. 469, 
470.) 


1. The ceremonial law is repealed, being adumbrative and ener ays 

2. The political law also; but 

3. The moral precepts are not repealed ; but even incidentally re-enacted. 
Scil., Christ’s declaration, “I am not come to destroy the law, but to 
fulfil ;” and Paul’s, ‘‘ Do we then make void the law through faith ?” 
The argument, then, from the want of formal re-enactment, has no 
weight. 

4. The entire decalogue is brought into the Christian code by a distinct in- 
junction of its separate precepts. (Pp. 470, 471.) 


II. These laws, in the Christian code, stand in other and higher circumstances 
than under the Mosaic dispensation. 


1. They are extended more expressly to the heart. 

2. They are carried out into a greater variety of duties. 

8. There is a more enlarged injunction of positive and particular virtues. 
4. All overt acts are connected with corresponding principles. 

5. These laws are connected with promises of divine assistance. 

6. They have a living illustration in the example of Christ. 

7. They are connected with higher sanctions. 


THE MORAL LAW. xxi! 


III. All attempts to teach morals, independent of Christianity, must be of mis- 
chievous tendency. (Pp. 472-474.) 


1. Because such attempts convey the impression that reason alone could 
discover the duty of man. 

2. Because they displace what is perfect for what is imperfect. 

8. Because they turn away from the revealed law to inferior considerations, 
such as beauty, fitness, &c. 

4. Because they either enjoin duties merely outward in the act, or else as 
sume that human nature is able to cleanse itself. 

6. Because that by separating doctrines from morals, they propose a new 
plan, other than that of the gospel, for renovating and moralizing the 
world. Yet moral philosophy, if properly guarded, and taken in con- 
nexion with the whole Christian system, is not to be undervalued. 


_V. As to the reasons on which moral precepts rest, it may be remarked, 


1. Some rest wholly on the authority of a revealer ; 
2. Others are accompanied with manifest rational evidence ; 
8. Others partially disclose their rationale to the anxious inquirer. 


VY. With respect to the application of general precepts, wide observation is ne- 
cessary. 
1. The precepts must be general. 
2. Exceptions to general rules should be watched with jealousy. 


VI. Grounds of moral obligation. 


1. “Eternal and necessary fitness of things,” leaves the question still open. 
2. “ Moral sense,” also unsatisfactory ; for 
(a.) Its indications are neither perfect nor uniform. 
(b.) Its mandates have no authority. 
3. “ Doctrine of the greatest good :” circuitous, and impossible in practice. 
4. The will of God, then, the only true ground of moral obligation. The 
obligation is founded on the relation of the creature to the Creator. 


VII. Nature of moral rectitude. (Payne’s view.) 


1. We sustain various relations to God. 

2. We sustain various relations to each other. 

Virtue is the conformity or harmony of man’s affections or actions, with the 
various regulations in which he has been placed; and since these rela- 
tions were constituted by God, rectitude may be regarded as conformity 
to the moral nature of God, the ultimate standard of virtua, 

Vor. IL—F. 


Ixxiy ANALYSIS OF WATSON S INSTITUTES 


Summed up in Scripture under the word godliness, embracing 
L Internal principles. 
1. Submission to God. Aen 
(a.) Grounded on the obligations (1) of creation, (2) of redemption. 
(b.) Regulated by his will, which is the highest rule of moral virtue, 
(1) Because of its authority. 
(2) Because it defines and enforces every branch of duty. 
(3) Because it annuls every contrary rule. 
(4) Because, instead of lowering its claims to suit man’s weakness, 1t 
connects itself with the offer of strength from on high. 
(5) Because it accommodates itself to no man’s interests. 
(6) Because it admits no exceptions in obedience. 
2. Love to God. 
(a.) Its nature. (Pp. 481, 482.) 
(b.) Its importance in securing obedience. (Pp. 482, 483.) 
8. Trust in God. 
(a.) Grounded on the divine injunction. Probable reason, to secure our 
peace of mind. 
(b.) Measured by the divine promises of help in the word of God. 
(c.) Hence connected with conversion, necessarily. (Pp. 484, 485.) 
4. Fear of God. 
(a.) Its nature :—(1.) Reverential, not servile; yet (2.) Involving a 
sense of our conditional liability to his displeasure. 
(b.) Its practical influence. 
5. Holiness rests upon these moral principles and habits. 


lI. External duties. 
A. Prayer. 
(a.) It is enjoined in Scripture. Matt. vii, 7; Luke xxi. 36; Phil. iv, 65 
1 Thess. v, 17. Where it is required to be (1.) Earnest: John iv, 
24; Rom. xii, 12. (2.) Importunate: Luke xi; 2 Cor. xii, 8, 9. 
(3.) Offered for particular blessings: Phil. iv, 6; Psalm xxii, 65 
Zech. x, 1; 1 Tim. ii, 1-3, ete. 
(v.) The reason on which it rests. We can infer from Scripture, 
1. That it cannot of itself produce in man a fitness for the reception 
of God’s mercies. 
2. That it is not an instrument but a condition of grace. (Pp. 489, 490.) 
3. But that it preserves in men’s minds a sense of God’s agency in the 
world, and of the dependence of all creatures upon him. (P. 491.) 
(c.) Objections to this duty. 
1. One is founded on predestination. 


THE DUTIES WE OWE TO GOD. Ixxv 


a. Answer on predestinarian principles insufficient and contradictory. 

b. True answer, that although God has absolutely predetermined 
some things, there are others which he has conditionally pre- 
determined. 

2. A second is founded on the perfections of the divine character. 
P-ley’s answer. 

3. A third is, that it is hard to conceive how prayer can affect the care 
of others. 

a. If it were so, that would not affect the duty. 

b. But it is no harder to conceive than why one man’s virtues or 
vices should affect the condition of others, which is the case 

; every day. (Pp. 493, 494.) 
.d.) Division of prayer. Four branches. 

1. Ejaculatory. 

a. Its nature. b. Its advantages. 

2. Private. 

a. Founded upon Christ’s injunction and example. 

b. Designed to produce unlimited confidence in God our Father. 

3. Family. 

a. Paley’s view of it defective. 

b. Its obligation shown, (1.) From the very constitution of a family. 
(Pp. 496, 497.) (2.) From the fact that the earliest patriarchal 
worship was family worship, which was not revoked either by 
Judaism or Christianity. (Pp. 498, 499.) 

ce. Its advantages. 

4. Public. 

a. Its obligation shown. (P. 500.) (1.) From the example of public 
worship among the Jews. (2.) By inference, from the com- 
mand to publish the gospel implying assemblies. (3.) By direct 
precepts, e. g., Paul’s Epistles are commanded to be read in 
churches. (4.) From the practice of the primitive age, shown 
from St. Paul and St. Clement. 

b. Its advantages. (P. 501.) 

(e.) Forms of prayer. 

1. Worship should be spiritual—which was doubtless the character of 
that of the primitive Church. (P. 502.) Latin and Greek corrup- 
tions. The liturgies of the reformed churches purified from these 
corruptions. 

2. Objections to forms of prayer. 

a. Absolute. But 

(1.) This objection involves principles which cannot be acted 
upon. (P. 503.) 

(2.) It disregards example and antiquity. Example of Jews: of 
John Baptist: of Christ: of primitive Church. (P. 504.) 

b. It is objected, that “ forms composed for one age become unfit for 
another.” But, 


- 


[xxv ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES 


(1.) The form may be modified. 
(2.) In fact, such forms have not become obsolete among us. 
(3.) If opinions become unscriptural, the form is a safeguard 
against heresy. 
e. “ The repetition of the form produces weariness and inattention 
Answer, 
(1.) The devout will not grow weary. 
(2.) The undevout will, even if extempore prayers are used. 
d. “ Forms must take too general a character.” (P. 506.) Answer, 
(1.) This is not true of the Liturgy of the Church of England. 
(2.) If extempore prayer be allowed also, the objection has no 
weight. 
3. Objections to extempore prayer. 
a. It gives rise to extravagant addresses to God. Ans. This will 
only be the case where the preachers are foolish or incompetent. 
b. It confuses the minds of the hearers. Ans. This lay against the 
inspired prayers in the Bible when first uttered; and would now 
lie against all occasional forms. Facts, too, disprove it. 
4. Conclusion. That each mode has its advantages, and that their pro- 
per combination forms the best public service. 


B. Praise and thanksgiving. 
a. Psalms and hymns, to be sung with the voice, and united with the 
melody of the heart, are of apostolic injunction. 
b. Uses. 1) To acknowledge God. 2) To promote suitable sentiments 
of gratitude and dependence in our hearts. 


C. Observance of the Lord’s day. (Ch. iii.) 
I. Obligation. (Pp. 508-520.) 

(I.) Though the observance is nowhere enjoined in so many words, 
yet, on the supposition that the Sabbath was instituted at the 
creation, we derive its obligation with great clearness from the 
Scriptures. 

a. As to the observance of a Sabbath in gereral. 

(1.) Inferentially, from the history of its observance from the crea: 
tion down to the period of the gospel narrative, (p. 509,) 
while no Scripture indicates its abolition. 

(2.) Directly, since the decalogue is binding on us, proved, (p. 510,) 

(a.) By our Lord’s declaration, that he “came not to destroy 
the law and the prophets.” 
(b.) By the text, “‘the Sabbath was made for man.” 
(c.) By St. Paul’s reply, (Rom. iii, 31,) “Do we then make 
void the law through faith ?” 
b. As to the observance of a particular day :— 

(1.) The change from the seventh to the first day was made by 

inspired men. (P. 511.) 


THE DUTIES WE OWE TO GOD. Ixxvu 


(2.) This change did not alter the law of the Sabbath, which was 
not so circumstantial as to require uniform modes of reckon- 
ing time, and observance of latitudes and longitudes for its 
fulfilment. (P. 512.) 

(3.) The original command says nothing of the epoch when the 
reckoning should begin. (Holden, pp. 512, 513.) 

(4.) But, for the sake of public worship, the Sabbath should be 
uniformly observed by a whole community at the same time. 

(11) But it has been denied that the Sabbath was instituted at the 
ereation. (P. 514.) ' 
~a. Paley’s ground, as summed up and answered by Holden. His 

principal ground is, “that the first institution of the Sabbath 
took place during the sojourning of the Jews in the wilderness ;” 
and from the passage in Exod. xvi, he infers, 

1. “ That if the Sabbath had been instituted at creation, there 
would be some mention of it in the history of the patriarchal 
ages.” But this history is very brief: there are omissions in it 
more extraordinary, e. g., prayer and circumcision. ‘The Sab- 
bath is hardly mentioned in Joshua, Judges, Ruth, &c.; but 
the observance of it seems to be intimated by the division of 
time into weeks, in the patriarchal history. 

2. “ That there is not, in Exod. xvi, any intimation that the Sab- 
bath was only the revival of an ancient institution.” But the 
fact is, that it is mentioned exactly in the way an historian 
would, who had occasion to speak of a well-known institution. 

3 Gen., chap. ii, is next adduced by Dr. Paley as not inconsistent 
with his opinion, as he concurs with those critics who suppose 
that Moses mentioned the sanctification of the Sabbath in that 
place, by prolepsis, in the order of connexion, not of time. 
But this doctrine is altogether gratuitous, and also inconsistent 
with the design of the sacred historian to give a clear and 
faithful history. 

The law of the Sabbath, then, is universal, and not peculiar to the Jews. 


II. Mode of observing the Christian Sabbath. (Pp. 520-524.) 

1. There are two extremes: (1.) To regard the Sabbath merely as a 
prudential institution ; (2.) To neglect the distinction between the 
moral and the ceremonial law of Moses: but yet, 

2. Those precepts of the Levitical code which relate to the Sabbath 
are of great use to us, (p. 522;) though, independent of these, 

3. We have throughout the Scriptures abundant guidance,—by which 
we leain, a.) That the Sabbath is to be a day. of rest and devotion. 
b.) That works of mercy are not unlawful. c.) But that the 
management of public charities is too secular an employment for 
the Sabbath. d.) And that amusements and recreations are out 
of place, nay, sinful. 


IXXVII ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


(II!.) DUTIES TO OUR NEIGHBOUR. (Ch. iv.) 


I. Cuariry, whieh is to be considered, 
1. As to its source. 
That source is a regenerated state of mind. 
2 As to its exclusiveness. It shuts out all 1) anger; 2) mplacability; 3) re 
venge ; 4) prejudice ; 5) evil-speaking ; 6) petty aggressions, though legal ; 
7) artificial distinctions, as its HAMttA tibia: 
. As to its active expression. 
a, .) It delights in sympathy, liberality, &c., as it is not ily negative. 
(2,) it dienes and regulates works of mercy. 
(3.) It teaches us that we are only stewards of the divine goodness. (P. 528.) 


a 


Il. Justice. (1.) Ethical. (II.) Economical. (III) Political. 
(I.) Ethical justice respects, 


A. Man’s natural rights, which are, 
1. Right to life; which is guarded by the precept, ‘Thou shalt not 
kill, ” &e. 
2. Right of property: guarded by the law, “Thou shalt not steal nor 
covet.” 
3. Right of liberty. Manstealing is classed in the New Testament with 
the greatest crimes. In noticing the question of slavery, we remark, 
a.) That slavery did exist under the Jewish law; but of a much milder 
type than that which prevailed in the surrounding nations; and all 
that can be inferred from it is, that a legislature may, in certain 
cases, be justified in mitigating,-rather than abolishing, the evil. 
b.) Every Christian government binds itself to be regulated by the 
principles of tle New Testament, which are obviously opposed to 
slavery. (Pp. 531, 532.) 
ce.) Modern African slavery of course calls loudly for the application of 
such principles. The slaves have never lost the right to liberty ; 
and that liberty should be restored. The manner of its restora- 
tion is in the power of government, provided, 1. That the eman- 
cipation be sincerely determined upon at some future time. 2. 
That it be not delayed beyond the period which the general 
interest of the slaves themselves prescribes. 3. That all possible 
means be adopted to render freedom a good to them. 


3. The question may be asked, whether man himself has the power of sur- 
rendering these great natural rights at his own option ? 
1. With respect to life. 
(1.) Where duty calls, (as in case of invasion, or when our allegiance 
to Christ must otherwise be laid down,) we are nct only at liberty 
to take the risk, but bound to do it. 


DUTIES TO OUR NEIGHBOUR. | IXx1x 


(2.) Suicide was considered unlawful by the ancients, on the ground 
_ of its being a violation of God’s appointment; and modern ethical 
writers have added little to the force of their doctrines on the sub- 
ject. Of course their views are inefficient. “Thou shalt not 
* kill,” is the divine prohibition against killing ourselves as well as 
others :—not, “ Thou shalt do no murder,” as Archbishop Whately 
incorrectly quotes, and then reasons upon. The crime of murder 
lies in the fact that man is made in the image of God—immortal. 
Self-m a:der is unpardonable. 
(3.) Duelling involves the two crimes of murder and suicide. 

2. With respect to property. Christianity teaches us that property is a 
trust; and that gambling, prodigality, &c., are violations of that 
trust. ; 

3. Liberty cannot be voluntarily parted with under the Christian dis- 
pensation. | 


C. The right of conscience is now to be considered. 

1. The duty of religious worship and opinions, and the right to the pro- 
fession of the latter and practice of the former, are strictly correla- 
tive; and as the obligation to perform the duty cannot be removed, 
so neither can the right to its performance be destroyed. 

2. But government has authority to take cognizance of the manner in 
which this right is exercised, and can interfere (1,) where the wor- 
ship is vexatious to society in general; or (2,) the opinions subversive 
of the principles of social order; or (3,) where dangerous political 
opinions are connected with religious notions. 

3. The case of those who reject revelation must be considered on its own 
merits. (P. 542.) 

(1.) Simple Deism may afford such a plea of conscience as the state 
ought to admit, though rejected by a sound theologian. 

(2.) To Atheism no toleration can be extended by a Christian govern- 
ment ;—for, a) jurisprudence cannot coexist with such doctrines ; 
b) they are subversive of the morals of the people; and, c) no 
conscience can be pleaded by their votaries for the avowal of 
such tenets. 


411.) Economical justice respects those relations which grow out of the existence 
of men in families. 


1. Relation of husband and wife, founded on the institution of marriage. 
(1.) Obligation of marriage. General, but not imperative, on every man, 
in all circumstances. Exceptions require the justificanon of an 
- equal or paramount obligation. 
(2.) Ends of marriage. 
(a.) To produce the greatest number of healthy children. * , 
(b.) To fix the relations which give rise to the domestic affections, etc. 


Ixxx ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. | 


(c.) To prevent polygamy, which, 1, was forbidden by the original 
law, although the practice of the Jews may have fallen short of it ; 
2, was expressly forbidden by Christ in his discourse with the 
Pharisees; 3, is forbidden also by nature. 

(d) To prevent fornication, (p. 545 :) which it does, 1, by providing 
for a lawful gratification of the sexual appetite ; 2, by the mutual 
love which it presupposes in the parties, without which the institu- 
tion is profaned. 

(3.) Character of the marriage contract. 

(a.) It is partly a civil contract—being under the control of the State 
for weighty reasons. 

(b.) It is also a religious act, in which vows are made to God by the 
contracting parties. Though the Scriptures do not expressly as- 
sign its celebration to the ministers of religion, yet the State has 
wisely done it. } 

(4.) Rights and duties of marriage. (Pp. 547-550.) 


2. Duties of children. Comprehensiveness of the precept, “ Honour thy 
father and thy mother,” embracing 

(1.) Love, comprising esteem and gratitude. 

(2.) Reverence, comprising, a,) the desire to please; b,) the fear to offend ; 
c,) the external manifestation of these in honour and civility; and, 
d,) the support of parents when in necessity. 

(3.) Obedience, which is to be universal, except in cases of conscience. 
This rule is most severely and frequently tried in regard to marriage. 
Here, 

a.) The child is not bound to marry at the command of the parents. 

b.) But should not violate their prohibition, except only when the 
parties are of age, and ther only if, 1,) the opposition is to a 
child’s marrying a religious person; or, 2,) is capricious; or, 3,) 
is unreasonable. 


8. Duties of parents. (P. 553.) 
(1.) Love, implying, 
(a.) The natural instinct of affection, cultivated by religion. 
(b.) The care and support of offspring. 
(2.) Instruction, which includes, 
(a.) The education of children in a way suited to their condition. 
(b.) Their training in the “ nurture and admcnition of the Lord ’—as 
the parent is a priest in his own family: and, 
(c.) The affording them a godly example. 
(3.) Government, which should be, 
(a.) Mild and gentle. 
(b.) Firm and faithful, implying even the use of corporeal punishment 
when necessary. 
<4.) Provision for the settlement of children in the world is a duty of 
parents, only limited by their ability. 


DUTIES TO OUR NEIGHBOUR.  ixxa 


4. Duties of servant and master. (P. 555.) 

(a.) This is a relation which must exist, as equality of condition is impos- 

sible. 

(b.) But 1t 1s a source of great evil, when unregulated by religion. 

(c.) The precepts of the New Testament go to prevent this evil, by as- 

signing, 
(1.) The duties of servants, viz., honour and obedience—which are to 
be cheerful and from the heart. 

_ (2.) The reciprocal duties of servants and masters; involving obedience 
on the one part, and kindness, moderation, and justice, on the 
other ; and, 

(3.) The religious duties of masters, including—1. Religious instruc- 
tion. 2. The observance of the Sabbath. 3. Existing influence 
in favour of religion. 


(II.) Political justice. 


1. Origin of power. (P. 569.) 
(a.) The Scriptures declare government to be an ordinance of God. 
(b.) The doctrine of a “ social compact” is therefore unscriptural 
(c.) Paley’s view, which places*the obligation in the will of God, as col- 
lected from expediency, is too loose : that will is declared in Scripture 


2. Rights and duties of sovereign and subject reciprocal. (P. 562.) 
(a.) Duties of government,—enactment of just laws, etc. Obligation 
grounded on direct passages of Scripture. (Pp. 562, 563.) 
(b.) Duties of subjects,—obedience, tribute, prayer, &c. 


8. Question, “ How far does it consist with Christian submission to endea- 

vour to remedy the evils of a government ?” (P. 564.) 

(a.) No form of government is enjoined in Scripture. Hence there is 
no divine right in particular families. 

(b.) Resistance to an established government, whatever may be its form, 
is consistent with duty only in certain extreme cases. (P. 556.) 
There are two kinds of resistance :— 

1. Of opinion. In order to be lawful, this resistance must be, (1) just ; 
(2) directed against public acts; (3) practical; (4) deliberate ; (5> 
not factious ; (6) not respecting local but general interests. 

2. Of force. This may be divided into two kinds :— 

(1.) That of a controlling force in the government: e.g., the Britisk 
Parliament, which can refuse supplies, etc. This resistance, 
which is implied by a constitution, is lawful, when advisedly 
and patriotically employed. 

(2.) That of arms. Three cases may be supposed :— 

a.) Where the nation enjoys and values good institutions. Here - 
unjust aggressions will not succeed. 


[xxxil ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


bh.) Where popular opinion is only partly enlightened. Here the 
work of improvement should precede resistance. Should the 
despot triumph, patriotism will suffer. Should the reformers 
triumph, the ignorant mass run om into licentiousness: e. g., 
French Revolution and Parliamentary War. 
c.) Where the sovereign power acts, by mercenaries or otherwise, in 
opposition to the views of the majority. Here resistance is jus 
tifiable: e. g., Revolution of 1688. 
(c.) The case of rival governments. 
(d.) Resistance for conscience’ sake. 


PART FOURTH. 


INSTITUTIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 


OUTLINE. 
I. THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Ch. i. 
U. THE SACRAMENTS. Ch. ii-iv. 


(L) Number and nature of sacraments, (Ch. ii.) 
(1I.) Sacrament of baptism, (Ch. iii.) 
(III.) Sacrament of Lord’s supper, (Ch. iv.) 


I. THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Ch. i. 


Tae Church of Christ, in its largest sense, consists of all who have been bap- 
tized in the name of Jesus Christ; in a stricter sense, it consists of those who 
are vitally united to Christ. ‘Taken in either view, it is a visible, permanent 
society, bound to obey certain rules; and of course government is necessarily 
supposed to exist in it. We have four points to examine in this chapter :— 


I. The nature of this government. It is wholly spiritual, for, 
1. It is concerned only with spiritual objects. 
2. Its only punitive discipline is comprised in “admonition,” “ reproof,” 
‘sharp rebukes,” and finally, “ excision from the society.” 


II. The persons to whom this government is committed, (P. 574.) It is necessary 
here to consider the composition of the primitive Church, as stated in the 
New Testament. 

1. Enunciation of offices in the church. Eph. iv, 11. 

2. Whether the words bishop and presbyter express two distinct sacred 
orders, has been a subject of much controversy. But it may be easily 
shown that there is no distinction of order, whatever distinction of office 
may exist. 

(1.) The argument from the promiscuous use of these terms in the New 
Testament seems incontrovertible. Acts xx, 28; Titus i, 5; Phil. 
Tete SOND poet, 

(2.) A distinction between bishops and presbyters did indeed arise at a 
very early period; but it proves nothing for a superior order, nor 


IxxxIv ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


for diocesan episcopacy ; for it cannot be. shown that the power of 
ordination was given to bishops to the exclusion of presbyters; and 
this early distinction may be easily accounted for. 

a.) It became expedient, doubtless, in the meetings of presbyters, at a 
very early period, that one should be chosen to preside over the 
rest; but the practice, as testified subsequently by Jerome, was 
founded solely upon expediency. It is to be remembered, that the 
primitive churches were formed very much upon the model of the 
Jewish synagogues. . 

b.) As Christianity made its way, the concerns of the districts of country 
surrounding cities naturally fell under the cognizance of the bishops 
of those cities. Thus diocesans arose ; subsequently, metropolitans, 
primates, patriarchs; and finally the pope came in. (Pp. 579-582.) 

(3.) The doctrine of succession cannot be made out; and if it could, 
would only trace diocesan bishops to the bishops of parishes. 

(4.) As for episcopacy itself, it may be freely allowed as a prudential 
regulation, wherever circumstances require it. But it may be ques- 
tioned whether presbyters could lawfully surrender their rights of 
government and ordination into the hands of a bishop, without that 
security which arises from the accountability of the administrator. 
(Pp. 582-586.) 

8. On the subject of the church itself, very different views have been held. 

(1.) The Papist view contends for its visible unity throughout the world, 
under a visible head. (P. 586.) 

(2.) The modern Independent view goes as far the other way. (P. 587.) 

The persons appointed to feed and govern the church being, then, those 
who are called “ pastors,” we have now to notice, 


all. The share which the body of the people have in their own government. (Pp. 
587-596.) 
a General views. 

1. The connexion of church and state gives rise to questions of peculiar 
perplexity and difficulty. We do not consider the church in this 
state. 

2. The New Testament view of the churches is, that they are associations 
founded upon conviction of the truth of Christianity, and the obliga- 
tory nature of the commands of Christ; and the mutual interdepen- 
dence of pastors and people, with perfect religious liberty, is every- 
where recognized in it. 

8. Questions of church government are often argued on the false ground 
that the governing power, in churches to which communion is per- 
fectly voluntary, is of the same character as when it is connected 
with the civil authority. Nothing can be more fallacious. 

\. In settling church government, there are pre-existing laws of Christ, 
which cannot be neglected or set aside. The government of the 
church is in its pastors, open to formal modifications; and it is to be 


NUMBER AND NATURE OF THE SACRAMENTS. Ixxxv 


conducted with suck a concurrence of the people as shall guard 
against abuse, without interfering with the Scriptural exercise of pas- 
toral duties. 
o. These views applied to particular cases. 

(1.) As to the ordination of ministers. ‘This power was never conveyed 
by the people: it was vested in the ministers alone, to be exercised 
on their responsibility to Christ. (Pp. 590, 591.) 

(2.) As to the laws by which the church is to be governed. Those which 
are explicitly contained in the New Testament are to be executed 
by the rulers, and obeyed by the people. (Pp. 591-594.) 

(3.) Other disciplinary regulations are matters of mutual agreement}; 
but democratic tendencies are to be shunned. (P. 594.) 

(4.) Power of admission and expulsion rests with the pastor, as also that 
of trying unworthy servants. (P. 595.) 


[V. The ends to which church authority is legitimately directed. 
1. The preservation and publication of sound doctrine: called by systematic 
writers, potestas doyuatixn: which may be thus summed up :— 

(1.) To declare the sense in which the church interprets the language of 
Scripture. 

(2.) To require all its members to examine such declarations of faith 
with docility and humility; while their right of private judgment is 
not violated. 

(3.) To silence within its pale all preaching contrary to its standards. 

2. The power of regulation: called, technically, potestas d:ataxrexy. 
3. The power of inflicting and removing censures: potestas dtaxgitixyn. (Pp. 
600-605.) 

(1.) Undoubtedly this power lies in the church: it has, however, been 
sadly abused. 

(2.) The claims of the Romish Church, in this particular, are arrogant 
assumptions: e. g., views founded on the gift of the keys to St. Peter. 


The labour of church government, and its difficulty, will always be greatly 


mitigated by a steady regard, on the part of both pastors and people, to 
duties as well as to rights. (P. 605.) 


II. THE SACRAMENTS. Ch. ii-iv. 


(1) NUMBER AND NATURE OF THE SACRAMENTS. (Ch, ii.) 


I. Number of the sacraments. Two only, baptism and the Lord’s supper, are 
instituted in the New Testament, and admitted by Protestants; the 
Romish Church added five others. 

1. The word used by the Greek Fathers was yvcyeiov; the Latin term is 
sacramentum, which signified (1,) a sacred ceremony, and (2,) the oath 


1XXXV1 ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


of fidelity taken by the Roman soldiers. For both these reasons, pro 
bably, the term was adopted by the Roman Christians. 

9. The sacraments are to be viewed as federal acts, which view sweeps 
away the five superstitious additions of the Romish Church—confirma- 
tion, penance, orders, matrimony, and extreme unction. 


{I. Nature of the sacraments. There are three leading views. (P. 608.) 

1 That of the Church of Rome, gratia ex opere operato, that the sacraments 
contain the grace they signify, and confer it, by the work itself. The 
objections to this doctrine are, 

(1.) It has no pretence of authority from Scripture, nay, 

(2.) It is decidedly antiscriptural. 

(3.) It debases the ordinance into a mere charm. 

(4.) It tends to licentiousness. 

(5.) It causes the virtue of the ordinance to depend upon the intention of 
the administrator. 

2. The opposite view is that of the Socinians, to which some orthodox Pro- 
testants have carelessly leaned,—that the sacraments are valuable solely 
as emblems of the spiritual and invisible. This scheme is as defective 
as that of the Papists is excessive. 

3. The third opinion is that of the Protestant churches:—expressed in the 

language (1,) of the Heidelberg Catechism, (2,) of the Church of 
England, (3,) of the Church of Scotland, containing the same leading 
views, that the sacraments are both signs and seals. 

- (a.) Sense in which they are signs. 

(b.) Sense in which they are seals. 


(II.) SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM. (Ch. iii) 


The obligation of baptism rests upon (1,) the example of our Lord; (2,) his 
command to the apostles, Matthew xxviii, 19; (3,) upon the practice of 
the apostles themselves. 


[. The nature of baptism. 


a. The Romanists consider baptism by a priest as of itself applying the 
merits of Christ to the person baptized ; and from this view arises their 
distinction between sins committed before and after baptism The 
Lutheran Church places the efficacy of this sacrament in regeneration ; 
nor has the Church of England departed entirely from the terms used 
by the Romish Church. The Quakers reject the rite altogether; and 
the Socinians merely regard it as a mode of professing the religion of 
Christ. 

b. The orthodox view is, that baptism is a federal transaction. (P. 614.) 
It is of great importance to establish the covenant character of this 
ordinance. 

1.) The covenant with Abraham, Gen. xvii, 7, was the general covenant 


SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM. Ixxxvii 


of grace, and not chiefly a political and national covenant. There 
are five distinct stipulations, under which—though they were pro- 
mises of temporal advantages—are conveyed a higher and spiritual 
covenant of grace. 

(2.) Circumcision was its “sign and seal,” both temporally and spiritually. 

(3.) As a seal of restriction, circumcision was done away by Christ. 

© (P. 617.) 

(4.) Paul’s different views of circumcision may be explained by con- 
sidering the different principles on which circumcision might be 
practised after it had become an »bsolete ordinance—1l, 2, 3, 4 
(Pp. 618, 619.) 

(5.) Baptism is, to the new covenant, what circumcision was to the old, 
and took its place by the appointment of God. (P. 620.) This may 
be argued, 1. From our Lord’s commission to the apostles, Matthew 
xxviii, 19; Mark xvi, 15,16. 2. From the words of our Lord to 
Nicodemus, “ Except a man be born,” &c. (P. 621.) 3. From Col. 
ii, 10-12, “ And ye are complete in him,” &c. (P. 621.) 4. From 
Gal. iii, 27-29, “For as many of you as have been baptized,” & 
(P. 622.) 5. From 1 Pet. iii, 20: “Which some time were disobe- 
dient,” &c. (P. 622.) 

a. Baptism is here called the antitype of Noah’s salvation by the ark, 
because his building and entering it were the visible expression 
of his faith. 

b. The meaning of the passage will vary with the rendering of the 
word éregérnua ; but 

c. However that word is rendered, the whole text shows that baptism, 
when an act of true faith, becomes an instrument of salvation. 

(6.) Baptism, both as a sign and seal, presents an entire correspondence 
to the ancient rite of circumcision. (Pp. 625-629.) 

1. As a sign. Circumcision exhibited the placability of God; held 
out the promise of justification ; and was the sign of sanctification : 
so baptism exhibits the divine placability ; is the initiatory rite into 
the covenant of pardon; and is the symbol of regeneration. But 
baptism as a sign, is more than circumcision, implying the outs 
pouring of the Holy Spirit in its fulness. 

2. Asa seal. As in circumcision blessings were pledged on the part of 
God, so in baptism are all spiritual gifts pledged ; and as in cir- 
cumcision a holy life was promised on the part of the believer, so in 
baptism do we pledge ourselves to the obedience of Christ. 

Booth’s objection, and the reply. 


Il Subjects of baptism. 
a. All adults wno possess faith in Christ. (P. 629.) 
b. Infant children. The practice of infant baptism may be shown to rest 
upon the strongest basis of Scriptural authority. 
(1.) Infants were circumcised ; baptism takes the place of circumcision ; 


*¥XXVIil ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


therefore the absence of an explic t exclusion of infants is sufficient 
proof of their title to baptism. 

(2.) The fact that the baptism of infants is nowhere prohibited in the 
New Testament, must have been misleading to all men, and especially 
to Jewish believers, if it were not proper. 

1. Baptisms were common among the Jews; their proselyte baptism 
was a baptism of families, and comprehended their infant children 
(Pp. 631-633.) 

2. The words of Peter at the Pentecost, “Repent, and be baptized; 
for the promise is unto you and to your children,” could not have 
been understood by the Jews except as calling upon them and 
their children to be baptized. Reasons, 1, 2, 3. (Pp. 633-635.) 

3.) Infant children are declared by Christ to be members of his Church. 
(Pp. 635-639.) 
1. They were so under the old dispensation, and no change was made. 
(P. 635.) 

2. We have our Lord’s direct testimony to this point—in two remark- 
able passages: a) Luke ix, 47,48; b) Mark x, 14. Notice the 
Baptist evasions of the argument from this latter passage. (Pp. 
636-639.) 

(4.) The argument from apostolic practice next offers itself. 

As to the absence of any express mention of infant baptism, instead of 
bearing in favour of the Baptists, it is a strong argument against 
them; for such an extraordinary alteration as the forbidding of in- 
fant baptism would have required particular explanation. The bay 
tisms of whole houses, mentioned in the Acts, are sufficient proof of 
the apostolic practice; they were either (1) instances of apostolic 
action, which would cover the whole ground, or (2) peculiar cases; 
and even if this latter be admitted, the Baptist must still show, that 
neither in the family of 

1. The Philippian jailer, (p. 640,) nor in that ot 

2. Lydia, (p. 641,) nor yet in that of 

8. Stephanas, (1 Cor. i, 16,) (p. 642,) were there any infants at all, 
which, to say the least of:it, is very improbable. 

(5.) The last argument may be drawn from the antiquity of the practice 
of infant baptism. (Pp. 644-646.) 

1. We have strong presumptive proof of its antiquity in the fact, that 
if it were ever introduced as an innovation, it was introduced 
without controversy ! 

2. Tertullian (second century) was the only ancient writer who op 
posed infant baptism ; but his very opposition proves the practice 
older than himself: he never speaks of its novelty. 

8. Justin Martyr, Ireneus, and Origen, mention infant baptism as the 
practice of their times ; and in A. D. 254 the question of deferring 
baptism to the eighth day was discussed. (P. 645.) 

4. The Anabaptists are of modern origin. (P. 646.) 


SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM. Ixxxiy 


I. Benefits of baptism. 


1. To the adult believer it is, (1) the sign of his admission into the cove: 
nant of grace ; (2) the seal, on the part of God, of the fulfilment of all 
its provisions; (3) the pledge, on his own part, of steadfast faith and 
obedience. 

2 ‘To the infant it conveys a pledge of divine grace; the present blessing 
of Christ ; the gift of the Holy Spirit; and the respect which God has 
to the believing act of the parents. 

8. To the parents it is a blessing also. 


IV Mode of baptism. This is comparatively of little moment, but has been 
the subject of much controversy. In considering the doctrine, that the 
only legitimate mode of baptizing is by immersion, we notice, 


a Several presumptions against it. (Pp. 647, 648.) 
(1.) It is not expressly enjoined. 
(2.) It is unsuitable to many climates and circumstances; nay, sometimes 
impossible. 
(3.) It puts away the consideration of health and life in many cases. 
(4.) It is likeiv to distract the thoughts. 
(5.) It is improbable that the three thousand converts on the day of Pen- 
tecost were immersed, or that the jailer’s family were. 
(6.) The practice is not a decent one. 
b. The argument from antiquity. (Pp. 648-650.) 
(i.) Immersion is ancient,—so is anointing with oil, &e. 
(2.) Aspersion and affusion are also ancient,—witness Tertullian, Cyprian, 
Gennadius, Aquinas, Erasmus. 
(3.) The baptism of naked subjects was ancient,—doubtless a superstitious 
extension of the original rite. 
e. The argument from the New Testament. (Pp. 650-660.) 
(1.) Use of the word Barrivu. 
1. The verb, with its derivatives, signifies either to dip, stain, wet with 
dew, &e. 
2. Employment of it in Scripture illustrated by various passages :— 
2 Kings ii, 11; Luke vii, 44; Dan. iv, 33; 1 Cor. x, 2. It is used 
generally in the New Testament to express the act of pouring or 
sprinkling water. 
<2.) Cases of baptism (in the New Testament) adduced commonly in 
proof of immersion. 
1. John’s baptism, (p. 652,) “ They were baptized of him in Jordan,” 
therefore they were immersed, is the argument. But, 
(a.) The object of this passage was to declare the place, not the 
mode of John’s baptism. 
(b) The “ baptism with the Holy Ghost ” sufficiently illustrates the 
mode of John’s haptism, the same form of words being used in 
regard to both. 


Vout. I.—1 


xc ANALYSIS OF WATSON’S INSTITUTES. 


(c.) The character of the river, and the scarcity of water, accounts 
for the place of baptism, and for the language employed here to 
fix it. (Pp. 653, 654.) River baptism does not necessarily im- 
ply immersion. Quotation from Wolfe. 

2 Our Lord’s baptism. ‘ He went up straightway out of the water.” 
Matthew iii, 16. This does not favour immersion more than any 
other mode of baptism. 

8. The eunuch’s baptism. “ And when they were come up out of the 
water,” &c. Acts viii, 88. If this proves any immersion, it proves 
that Philip was immersed as well as the eunuch. But ée¢ and é« 
do not necessarily mean info and out of. 

4. Baptism by Jesus and by John in non, John iii, 22, No proof 
of immersion. 

(3.) Argument from Romans vi, 3,4: “ Therefore we are buried with 
him by baptism,” &c. Here the Baptists suppose a comparison is 
instituted between the burial of Christ and immersion. But, 

t. If such resemblance be intended by “ buried,” why not also by 
“planted” and “crucified,” both which terms are used*in the 
same connexion ? (P. 657.) 

2. The type of our death, burial, and resurrection as believers, in this 
passage, is not the clumsy one of immersion; but the death, burial, 
and resurrection of our Lord. (Pp. 657-659.) 

We conclude, therefore, that the pouring out of water was the apostolic 
mode of administering the ordinance, and that washing and immer- 
sion were introduced later, along with other superstitious additions 
to this sacrament. 


(III.) SACRAMENT OF LORD’S SUPPER. (Ch. iv.) 


Agreement and difference between baptism and the Lord’s supper, as stated 
in the Catechism of the Church of Scotland. We notice now, 


1 The institution of the ordinance. 
1. As baptism took the place of circumcision, so the Lord’s supper was in- 
stituted in place of the passover. 
2. It was instituted by Christ, immediately after celebrating the passover 
for the last time with his disciples. 


IL. Its perpetuity and obligation. (P. 661.) From 1 Cor. xi, 23-26, we learn, 

1. That Paul received a special revelation as to this ordinance. 

2. That the command of Christ, “‘ This do in remembrance of me,” was 
laid by Paul upon the Corinthians. 

3. That he regarded the Lord’s supper as a rite to be often celebrated. 


Tl. is nature. 
1. Various views of ° 
(1.) The Church of Rome, which held the doctrine of transubstantiation; 


SACRAMENT OF LORD’S SUPPER. xcl 


of an intrinsic value in the elements themselves; of the elements 
being proper objects of worship and homage ; and of the cup being 
withheld from the laity. 

(2.) Luther, who held that though the bread and wine remain unchanged, 
the body and blood of Christ are received together with them: the 
doctrine of consubstantiation. 

(3.) Carolostadt and Zuingle, who taught that the bread and wine are 
the signs of the absent body and blood of Christ. This view is 
adopted, with some liberality, by the Socinians. 

(4.) The Reformed Churches, which reject both transubstantiation and 
consubstantiation, but go further than the Socinians, in declaring 
that to all who remember Christ worthily, he is spiritually present in 
the sacrament. 


2. Sacramental character of the ordinance. (P. 667.) 


IV 


(1.) As to Christ. The words, “ This is my body,” &c., show that the 
Lord’s supper is a visible sign that the covenant was ratified by the 
sacrificial death of Christ. 

(2.) As to the recipients. It is a recognition of their faith in the sacrifi- 
cial death of Christ. 

(3.) Asa sign, it exhibits, a) the love of God, b) the love of Christ, c) 
the extreme nature of his sufferings, d) the vicarious character of 
his death, e) the benefits derived from it through faith. 

(4.) As a seal, it is, a) a pledge of the continuance of God’s covenant, 
b) a pledge to each believer of God’s mercies, c) an exhibition of 
Christ as the spiritual food of the soul, d) a renewed assurance of 
divine grace. 


yeneral observations. 

The ordinance excludes, not only open unbelievers, but all who deny the 
atonement. ’ 

All are disqualified who do not give evidence of genuine repentance and 
desire for salvation. 

£very church should shut out such persons by discipline. 

But the table of the Lord is not to be surrounded with superstitious ter 
rors. 

There is no rule as to the frequency of celebrating the ordinance. 

ts habitual neglect by professing Christians is highly censurabie. 


<i een 


iagfad 
nm ‘ 





PART FIRST 


EVIDENCES OF THE DIVINE AUTHORITY OF THE 
HOLY SCRIPTURES, 


CHAPTER I. 


MAN A MORAL AGENT. 


Tue theological system of the Holy Scriptures being the subject of 
our inquiries, it is essential to our undertaking to establish their Divine 
authority. But before the direct evidence which the case admits is 
adduced, our attention may be profitably engaged by several consider- 
ations, which afford presumptive evidence in favour of the revelations of 
the Old and New Testaments. ‘These are of so much weight that they 
ought not, in fairness, to be overlooked; nor can their force be easily 
resisted by the impartial inquirer. . 

The moral agency of man is a principle on which much depends in 
- such an investigation ; and, from its bearing upon the question at.issue, . 
requires our first notice, 

He is a moral agent who is capable of performing moral actions ; and 
an actionis rendered moral by two circumstances,—that it is voluntary,— 
and that it has respect to some rule which determines it to be good or 
evil. “Moral good and evil,” says Locks, “is the conformity or dis- 
agreement of our voluntary actions to some law, whereby good or evil 
is drawn upon us from the will or power of the law maker.” 

The terms found in all languages, and the laws which have been 
enacted in all states with accompanying penalties, as well as the praise 
or dispraise which men in all ages have expressed respecting the conduct 
of each other, sufficiently show that man has always been considered as 
an agent actually performing, or capable of performing moral actions, 
for as such he has been treated. No one ever thought of making laws 
tc regulate the conduct of the inferior animals; or of holding them up 
to public censure or approbation. 

The rules by which the moral quality of actions has been determined 
are, however, not those only which have been embodied in the legisla- 
tion of civil communities. Many actions would be judged good or evil, 
were all civil codes abolished; and others are daily condemned or 
approved in the judgment of mankind, which are not of a kind to be 
~ecognized by public laws. Of the moral nature of human actions there 
must have been a perception in the minds of men, previous to the enact- 


6 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


ment of laws. Upon this common perception al] law is founded, and 
claims the consent and support of society ; for in all human legislative 
codes there is an express or tacit appeal to principles previously acknow- 
ledged, as reasons for their enactment. 

This distinction in the moral quality of actions previous to the esta- 
blishment of civil regulations, and independent of them, may in part be 
traced to its having been observed, that certain actions are injurious 
to society, and that to abstain from them is essential to its well being. 
Murder and theft may be given as instances. It has also been perceived, 
that such actions result from certain affections of the mind; and the in- 
dulgence or restraint of such affections has therefore been also regarded 
asamoralact. Anger, revenge, and cupidity, have been deemed evils as 
the sources of injuries of various kinds ; and humanity, self government, 
and integrity, have been ranked among the virtues; and thus both cer- 
tain actions, and the principles from which they spring, have, from their 
effect upon society, been determined to be good or evil. 

But it has likewise been observed by every man, that individual hap- 
piness, as truly as social order and interests, is materially affected by 
particular acts, and by those feelings of the heart which give rise to 
them; as for instance, by anger, malice, envy, impatience, cupidity, &c ; 
and that whatever civilized men in all places and in all ages have agreed 
to call vicx, is inimical to health of body, or to peace of mind, or to both. 
This, it is true, has had little influence upon human conduct ; but it has 
been acknowledged by the poets, sages, and satirists of all countries, and 
is adverted to as matter of universal experience. While therefore there 
is in the moral condition and habits of man something which propels 
him to vice, uncorrected by the miseries which it never fails to inflict, 
there is also something in the constitution of the human soul which ren. 
ders vice subversive of its happiness, and something in the established 
law and nature of things, which renders vice incompatible with the col. 
lective interests of men in the social state. 

Let that then be granted by the Tuetst which he cannot consistently 
. deny, the existence of a Supreme Creator, of infinite power, wisdom, 
goodness, and justice, who has both made men and continues to govern 
them; and the strongest presumption is afforded by the very constitution | 
of the nature of man, and the relations established among human affairs, 
which with so much constancy dissociate happiness from vicious pas. 
sions, health from intemperance, the peace, security, and improvement 
of society from violence and injustice,—that the course of action which 
best secures human happiness, has the sanction of Hrs will, or in other 
words that Hr, by these circumstances, has given his authority m favour 
of the practice of virtue, and opposed it to the practice of vice. (1) 


(1) **As the manifold appearances of design and of final causes, in the con. 
stitution of the world, prove it to be the work of an intelligent mind; so the 


FIRST. } THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. ie 


But though that perception of the difference of moral actions which 
S antecedent to human laws, must have been strongly confirmed by 
these facts of experience, and by such observations, we have no reason 
to conclude that those rules by which the moral quality of actions has, 
im all ages, been determined, were formed solely from a course of op- 
servation on their tendency to promote or obstruct human happiness ; 
because we cannot collect either from history or tradition, that the world 
was ever without such rules, though they were often warped and cor- 
rupted. ‘The evidence of both, on the contrary, shows, that so far from 
these rules having originated from observing what was injurious and 
what beneficial to mankind, there has been, among almost all nations, 
a constant reference to a declared will of the Supreme God, or of sup- 
posed deities, as the rule which determines the good or the evil of the 
conduct of men; which will was considered by them as a law, prescrib- 
ing the one and restraining the other under the sanction, not only of 
our being left to the natural injurious consequences of vicious habit 
and practice in the present life, or of continuing to enjoy the benefits 
of obedience in personal and social happiness here; but of positive re- 
ward and positive punishment in a future life. 

Whoever speculated on the subject of morals and moral obligation in 

ny age, was previously furnished with these general notions and dis- 
tinctions. ‘They were in the world before him; and if all tradition be 
not a fable, if the testimony of all antiquity, whether found in poets or 
historians, be not delusive, they were in the world in those early periods 
when the great body of the human race remained near the original] seat 
of the parent families of all the modern and now widely extended nations 
of the earth; and in those early periods they were not regarded as dis- 
tinctions of mere human opinion and consent, but were invested with 
a Divine authority. 

We have then before us two presumptions, each of great weight. 
Fras, that those actions which among men have almost universally been 
judged good, have the implied sanction of the will of our wise and good 
Creator being found in experience, and by the constitution of our nature 
and of human society, most conducive to human happiness. And, sEconn, 
that they were originally in some mode or other prescribed and enjoined 
as his Jaw, and their contraries prohibited. 

If therefore there is presumptive evidence of only ordinary strength, 


particular final causes of pleasure and pain, distributed among his creatures, prove 
that they are under his government—-what may be called his natural government 
of creatures endued with sense and reason. This, however, implics somewhat 
more than secms usually attended to when we speak of God’s natural government 
of the world. It implies government of the very same kind with that which a 
master exercises over his servants, or a civil magistrate over his subjects.”— 


, Bishop Burt er.) 


8 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


that the rule by which our actions are determined to be good or evil is 
primarily a law of the Creator, we are all deeply interested in ascertain- 
ing where that law exists in its clearest manifestation. For ignorance 
of the law, in whole or in part, will be no excuse for disobedience, if we 
have the opportunity of acquainting ourselves with it; and an accurate 
_ acquaintance with the rulr- may assist our practice in cases of «which 
human laws take no cognizance, and which the wilfully corrupted general 
judgment of mankind may have darkened. And should it appear either 
that in many things we have offended more deeply than we suspect, 
whether wilfully or from an evitable ignorance ; or that, from some 
common accident which has befallen our nature, we .\ave lost the power 
‘of entire obedience without the use of new and extraordinary means, the 
knowledge of the rule is of the utmost consequence to us, because by it 
we may be enabled to ascertain the precise relation in which we stand 
to God our Maker; the dangers we have incurred; and the means of 
escape, if any have been placed within our reach. 


CHAPTER II. 


Tue Rutu, which determines the Quality of mMoraL Actions, must be 
presumed to be matter of RrvELATION From Gop. 


Ir is well observed by a judicious writer, that “all the distinctions of 
good and evil refer to some principle above ourselves ; for, were there 
no Supreme Governor and Judge torreward and punish, the very notions 
of good and evil would vanish away : they could not exist in the minds 
of men, if there were not a Supreme Director to give laws for the 
measure thereof.” (Ellis’s Knowledge of Divine Things, &c.) 

If we deny the existence of a Divine law obligatory upon man, we 
must deny that the world is under Divine government, for government 
without rule or law is a solecism; and to deny the Divine government, 
would leave it impossible for us to account for that peculiar nature which 
has been given to man, and those relations among human concerns and 
interests to which we have adverted, and which are so powerfully affected 
by our conduct :—certain actions and habits which almost all mankind 
have azreed to call good, being connected with the happiness of the 
individual, and the well being of society; and so on the contrary. This 
too has been matter of uniform and constant experience from the earliest » 
ages, and warrants therefore the conclusion, that the effect arises from 
original principles and a constitution of things which the Creator has 
established. Nor can any reason be offered why such a nature should 
be given to man, and such a law impressed on the circumstances and 
beings with which he is surrounded, except that both had an intended 


FIRS £.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 9 


celation to certain courses of action as the sources of order and happiness, 
as truly as there was an intended relation between the light and the eye 
which is formed to receive its rays. 

But as man is not carried to this course of action by physical impulse 
or necessity; as moral conduct supposes choice and therefore instruc. 
tion, and the persuasion of motives arising out of it; the benevolent in. 
tenticn of the Creator as to our happiness could not be accomplished 
without instruction, warning, reward, and punishment ; all of which 
necessarily imply superintendence and control, or, in other words, a 
moral government. The creation therefore of a being of such a nature 
as man, implies Divine government, and that government a Divine law. 

Such a law must be the subject of ReveLaTion. Law is the will of 
f superior power ; but the will of a superior visible power cannot be 
known without some indication by words or signs, in other terms, with- 
out a revelation ; and much Jess the will of an invisible power, of an 
order superior to our own, and confessedly mysterious in his mode of 
existence, and the attributes of his nature. . 

Again, the will of a superior is not in justice binding until, in some 
mode, it is sufficiently declared; and the presumption, therefore, that 
God wills the practice of any particular course of action, on the part of 
his creatures, establishes the farther presumption, that of that will there 
has been a manifestation ; and the more so if there is reason to suppose 
that any penaity of a serious nature has been attached to disobedience. 

The revelation of this will or law of God may be made either by 
action, from which it is to be inferred; or by direct communication in 
language. Any indication of. the moral perfections of God, or of his 
design in forming moral beings, which the visible creation presents to 
the mind; or any instance of his favour or displeasure toward his crea- 
tures clearly and frequently connected in his administration with any 
particular course of conduct, may be considered as a revelation of his 
will by action; and is not at all inconsistent with a farther revelation by 
the direct means of language. 

The Theist admits that a revelation of the will of God has been made 
by significant actions, from which the duty of creatures is to be inferred, 
and contends that this is sufficient. “They who never heard of any 
externa] revelation, yet if they knew from the nature of things what is fit 
for them to do, they know all that God will or can require of them.” (2) 

They who believe that the Holy Scriptures contain a revelation of 
Ged’s will, do not deny that indications of his will have been made by 


(2) Christianity as Old as the Creation, p. 233.-—‘* By employing our reason 
to collect the will of God from the fund of our nature, physical and moral, we 
may acquire not only a particular knowledge of those laws which are deducible 
from them, but a general knowledge of the manner in which God is pleased te 
exercise his supreme powers in this system.” (BoLineBRoxke’s Works, vol. v, p. 100.) 


10 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. (PARr 


action; but they contend that they are in themselves imperfect and in- 
sufficient, and that they were not designed to supersede a direct reve- 
lation. ‘They hold also, that a direct communication of the Divine will 
was made to the progenitors of the human race, which received addi- 
tions at subsequent periods, and that the whole was at length embodied 
in the book called, by way of eminence, “'The Bible.” 

The question immediately before us is, on which side there is the 
strongest presumption of truth. Are there, in the natural works of God, 
or in his manner of governing the world, such indications of the will of 
God concerning us, as can afford sufficient direction in forming a per- 
fectly virtuous character, and sufficient information as to the means by 
which it is to be effected? We may try this question by a few obvious 
instances. 

The Theist will himself acknowledge, that temperance, justice, and 
benevolence, are essential to moral virtue. With respect to the first, 
nothing appears in the constitution of nature, or in the proceedings of 
the Divine administration, to indicate it to be the will of God that the 
xppetites of the body should be restrained within the rules of sobriety, 
except that, by a connection which has been established by him, the 
excessive indulgence of those appetites usually impairs health. If there- 
fore we suppose this to amount to a tacit prohibition of excess, it still 
leaves those free from the rule whose firm constitutions do not suffer 
from intemperate gratifications; it gives one rule for the man of vigor- 
ous, and another for the man of feeble health ; and it is no guard against 
that occasional insobriety which may be indulged in without cbvious 
danger to health, but which nevertheless may be excessive in degree 
though occasional in recurrence. ‘The rule is therefore imperfect. 

Nor are the obligations of justice in this way indicated with adequate 
clearness. Acts of injustice are not like acts of excessive intemperance, 
punishable in the ordinary course of providence by pain and disease and 
premature death, as their natural general consequences; nor, in most 
instances, by any other marked infliction of the Divine displeasure in 
the present life. From their injurious effects upon society at large, 
indications of the will of God respecting them may doubtless be inferred, 
but such effects arise out of the grosser acts of fraud and rapine; those 
only affect the movements of society, (which goes on without being 
visibly disturbed by the violations of the nicer distinctions of equity which 
form an essential part of virtue,) and never fail to degrade. and corrupt 
individual character. Rules of justice, therefore, thus indicated, would, 
like those of temperance, be very imperfect. 

The third branch of virtue is benevolence, the disposition and the habit 
of doing good to others. But in what manner except by revelation are 
the extent and the obligation of this virtue to be explained? If it be said, 
that “the goodness of God himself as manifested in creation and pro- 


s 


FIRST.? THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 1] 


vidence presents so striking an example of beneficence to his creatures, 
that his will, as to the cultivation of this virtue, may be unequivocally 
inferred from it,” we cannot but perceive, that this example itself is 
imperfect, unless other parts of the Divine conduct be explained to us, 
as the Scriptures explain them. For if we have manifestations of his 
goodness, we see also fearful proofs of his severity. Such are the per- 
nussion of pestilence, eurthquakes, inundations : and the infliction of 
pain and death upon all men, even upon infants and unsinning animals. 
If the will of God in favour of beneficent actions is to be inferred from 
the p/zasure which is afforded to those who perform them, it is only 
indicated to those to whom a beneficent act gives pleasure, and its non- 
performance pain; and it cannot therefore be at all apprehended by 
those who by constitution are obdurate, or by habit selfish. The rule 
would therefore be uncertain and dark, and entirely silent as to the 
extent to which beneficence is to be carried, and whether there may 
not be exceptions to its exercise as to individuals, such as enemies, 
vicious persons, and strangers. 

Whatever general indications there may be in the acts of God, in the 
constitution of human nature, or in the relations of society, that some 
actions are according to the will of God, and therefore good, and that 
others are opposed to his will, and therefore evil; it follows then, that 
they form a rule too vague in itself, and too liable to different interpret- 
ations, to place the conduct of men under adequate regulation, even in 
respect of temperance, justice, and beneficence. Butif these and other 
virtues, in their nicest shades, were indicated by the types of nature, and 
the manifestations of the will of God in his moral government, these types 
and this moral government are either entirely silent, or speak equivocally 
as to subjects of vital importance to the right conduct and effectual mora] 
control, as well as to the hopes and the happiness of man. 

There is no indication, for instance, in either nature or providence, 
that it is the will of God that his creatures should worship him; and the 
moral effects of adoration, homage, and praise, on this system, would be 
lost. There is no indication that God will be approached in prayer, and 
this hope and solace of man is unprovided for. Nor is there a sufficient 
indication of a future state of rewards and punishment; because there 
is no indubitable declaration of man’s immortality, nor any facts and 
principles so obvious as to enable us confidently to infer it. All observa- 
tion lies directly against the doctrine of the immortality of man. He 
dies, and the probabilities of a future life which have been established 
upon the unequal distribution of rewards and punishments in thislife, and 
the capacities of the human soul, are a presumptive evidence which has 
been adduced, as we shall afterward show, only by those to whom the 
doctrine had been transmitted by tradition, and who were therefore-in 
possession of the idea; and, even then, to have any effectual force of 


12 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


persuasion, they must be built upon antecedent principles furnished only 
by the revelations contained in Holy Scripture. Hence some of the 
wisest heathens, who were not wholly unaided in their speculations on 
these subjects by the reflected light of those revelations, confessed them- 
selves unable to come to any satisfactory conclusion. The doubts ef 
Socrates, who expressed himself the most hopefully of any on the subject 
ofa future life, are well known; and Cicero, who occasionally expatiates 
with so much eloquence on this topic, shows by the skeptical expressions 
which he throws in, that his belief was by no means confirmed. (3) If, 
therefore, without any help from direct or traditional instruction, we could 
go as far as they, it is plain that our religious system would be deficient 
in all those motives to virtue which arise from the doctrines of man’s 
accountability and a future life, and in that moral control which such 
doctrines exert : the necessity of which for the moral government of 
the world is sufficiently proved, by the wickedness which prevails even 
where these doctrines are fully taught. 

Still farther, there is nothing in those manifestations of God and of 
his will, which the most attentive contemplatist can be supposed to col- 
lect from his natural works and from his sovereign rule, to afford the 
hope of pardon to any one who is conscious of having offended him, 
or any assurance of felicity in a future state, should one exist. 

Some consciousness of offence is felt by every man; and though he 
should not know the precise nature or extent of the penalty attached to 
transgression, he has no reason to conclude that he is under a mild and 
fondly merciful government, and that therefore his offences will in course 
be forgiven. All observation’and experience lie against this; and the 
case is the more alarming to a considerate mind, that so little of the sad 
inference that the human race is under a rigorous administration, depends 
upon reasoning and opinion: it is fact of common and daily observation. 
The minds of men are in general a prey to discontent and care, and are 
agitated by various evil passions. The race itself is doomed to wasting 
labours of the body or the mind, in order to obtain subsistence. Their 
employments are for the most part low and grovelling, in comparison of 
the capacity of the soul for intellectual pleasure and attainments. The 
mental powers, though distributed with great equality among the various 
classes of men, are only in the case of a few individuals ever awakened. 
The pleasures most strenuously sought are therefore sensual, degrad- 
ing, and transient. Life itself, too, is precarious: infants suffer and 
die, youth is blighted, and thus by far the greater part of mankind is 


(3) So in his Tusc. Quest. 1, he says, ‘* Expone igitur, nisi molestum est, pri- 
mum animos, si potes, remanere post mortem; tum si minus id obtinebis (est enim 
arduum,) docebis carere omni malo mortem. Show me first, if you can, and if it 
be not too troublesome, that souls remain after death ; or if you cannot prove that, 
(for it is difficult,) declare how there is no evil in death.” 


FIRST. |} THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 13 


swept away before the prime of life is attained. Casualties, plagues, 
famines, floods, and war, carry on the work of destruction. In the 
majority of states the poor are oppressed, the rich are insecure, private 
wrong is added to public oppression, widows are wronged, orphans are 
deprived of bread, and the sick and aged are neglected. The very re- 
-igions of the world have completed human wretchedness by obdurating 
the heart, by giving birth to sanguinary superstitions, and by introducing 
a corruption of morals destructive of the very elements of well-ordered 
society. Part of these evils are permitted by the Supreme Governor, 
and part inflicted, either by connecting them as consequents to certain 
actions, or to the constitution of the natural world more immediately ; 
but, whether permitted or inflicted, they are punitive acts of his admi- 
nistration, and present him before us, notwithstanding innumerable 
instances of his benevolence, as a Being of “ terrible majesty.” (4) 
To remove in part the awful mystery which overhangs such an ad. 
ministration, the most sober Theists of former times, differing from the 
horde of vulgar blasphemers and metaphysical Atheists who have arisen 
in our own day, have been ready to suppose another state of being, to 
which the present has respect, and which may discover some means of 
connecting this permission of evil, and this infliction of misery, (often on 
the apparently innocent,) with the character of a Governor of perfect 
wisdom, equity, and goodness. But in proportion as any one feels 
himself obliged to admit and to expect a state of future existence, he 
must feel the necessity of being assured, that it will be a felicitous one. 
Yet should he be conscious of frequent transgressions of the Divine 
law ; and at the same time see it demonstrated by facts occurring 
daily, that in the present life the government of God is thus rigorous, 
the only fair conclusion to which he can come is, that the Divine go. 
vernment will be conducted on precisely the same principles in another, 
for an infinitely perfect being changes not. Farther discoveries may 
then be made; but they may go only to establish this point, that the 
apparent severity of his dispensations in the present life are quite con- 
sistent with justice, and even the continued infliction of punishment 
with goodness itself, because other moral agents may be benefited by 
the example. The idea of a future life does not therefore relieve the 
case. Ifit be just that man should be punished here, it may be re- 


(4) **Some men seem to think the only character of the Author of nature to 
be that of simple absolute benevolence. There may possibly be in the creation, 
beings, to whom he manifests himself under this most amiable of all characters, 
for it is the most amiable, supposing it not, as perhaps it is not, incompatible 
with justice ; but he manifests himself to us as a righteous Governor. He may 
consistently with this be simply and absolutely benevolent ; but he is, for he has 
given us a proof in the constitution and conduct of the world that he is, a Go. 
vernor over servants, as he rewards and punishes us for our actions.” (BUTLER’s 


Analogy.) 


14 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PAKT 


quired by the same just regard to the principles of a strictly moral 
government, that he should be punished hereafter. 

If then we are offenders against the Majesty of so dread a being, as 
the actual administration of the world shows its Governor to be, it is 
in the highest degree necessary, if there be in him a disposition to for- 
give our offences, that we should be made acquainted with it, and with 
the means and conditions upon which his placability can become avail. 
able to us. If he is not disposed to forgive, we have the greatest cause 
for alarm ; if an inclination to forgive does exist in the Divine Mind, 
there is as strong a reason to presume that it is indicated to us some- 
where, as that the Jaw under which we are placed should have been 
expressly promulgated ; and especially if such a scheme of bestowing 
pardon has been adopted as will secure the ends of moral] government, 
and lead to our future obedience,—the only one which we can con. 
ceive to be worthy of God. 

Now it is not necessary to prove at length, what is so obvious, -hat 
if we had no method of knowing the will and purposes of God, but by 
inferring them from his works and his government, we could have no 
information as to any purpose in the Divine Mind to forgive his sin- 
ning creatures. The Theist, in order to support this hope, dwells 
upon the proofs of the goodness of God with which this world abounds, 
but shuts his eyes upon the demonstrations of his severity ; yet these 
surround him as well as the other, and: the argument from the severity 
of God is as forcible against pardon, as the argument from his good. 
ness is in its favour. At the best, it is left entirely uncertain; a 
ground is laid for heart-rending doubts, and fearful anticipations; and, 
for any thing he can show to the contrary, the goodness which God 
has displayed in nature and providence may only render the offence 
of man more aggravated, and serve to strengthen the presumption 
against the forgiveness of a wilful offender, rather than afford him 
any reason for hope. 

The whole of this argument is designed to prove, that had we been 
left, for the regulation of our conduct, to infer the will and purposes 
of the Supreme Being from his natural works, and his administration 
of the affairs of the world, our knowledge of both would have been 
essentially deficient ; and it establishes a strong presumption in favour 
of a direct revelation from God to his creatures, that neither his will 
concerning us, nor the hope of forgiveness, might be left to dark and 
uncertain inference, but be the subjects of an express declaration. — 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 15 


CHAPTER III. 


Farruer PresuMPTIoN oF a DIRECT REeveELATION from the Weakness 
and Corruption of human Reason, and the want of Authority in merely 
human Opinions. | 


Ir we should allow that a perfect reason exercised in contemplating 
the natura] works of God and the course of his moral government, might 
furnish us, by means of an accurate process of induction, with a sufh- 
cient rule to determine the quality of moral actions, and with sufficient 
motives to obedience, yet the case would not be altered; for that perfect 
reason is not to be found among men. It would be useless to urge upon 
those who deny the dectrine of Scripture, as to the fall of man, that his 
understanding and reason are weakened by the deterioration of his 
whole intellectual nature. But it will be quite as apposite to the argu- 
ment to state a fact not to be controyerted, that the reasoning powers 
of men greatly differ in strength; and that from premises, which all 
must allow to be somewhat obscure, different inferences would inevitably 
be drawn. Either then the Divine law would be what every man might 
take it to be, and, by consequence, a variable rule, a position which 
cannot surely be maintained ; or many persons must fai! of duly appre- 
hending it. And though in this case it should be contended, that he is 
not punishable who obeys the law as far as he knows it, yet surely the 
ends of a steady and wisely formed plan of general government would 
on this ground be frustrated. ‘The presumption here also must there- 
fore be in favour of an express declaration of the will of God, in terms 
which the common understandings of men may apprehend, as the only 
means by which sufficient moral direction can be given, and effectual 
control exerted. 

The notion, that by rational induction the will of God may be inferred 
from his acts in a sufficient degree for every purpose of moral direction, 
is farther vitiated by its assuming that men in general are so contempla- 
tive in their habits as to pursue such inquiries with interest ; and so well 
disposed as in most cases to make them with honesty. Neither of these 
is true. 

The mass of mankind neither are, nor ever have been, contemplative, 
and must therefore, if not otherwise instructed, remain ignorant of their 
duty ; for questions of virtue, morals, and religion, as may be shown 
from the contentions of the wisest of men, do not for the most part lie 
level tu the minds of the populace without a revelation. (5) 


(5) “If philosophy had gone farther than it did, and from undeniable prines 
ples given us ethics in a science, like mathematics, in every part demonstrable, 
this yet would not have been so effectual to man in this imperfect. state, nor pro- 


16 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


[t is equally a matter of undoubted fact, that in all questions of 
morals which restrain the vices, passions, and immediate interests of 
men, conviction is generally resisted, and the rule is brought down to 
the practice, rather than the practice raised to the rule; so that the 
most flimsy sophisms are admitted as arguments, and principles the 
most lax displace those of rigid rectitude and virtue. This is matter 
of daily observation and cannot be denied. The irresistible inference 
from this is, that at least, the great body of mankind, not being accits. 
tomed to intellectual exercises ; not having even leisure for them on ac- 
count of their being doomed to sordid labours; and not being disposed to 
conduct the investigation with care and accuracy, would never become 
acquainted with the will of the Supreme Governor, if the knowledge of it 
were only to be obtained from habitual observation and reasoning.— 
Should it be said, “that the intellectual and instructed part of mankind 
ought to teach the rest,” it may be replied, that even that would be diffi. 
cult, because their own knowledge must be communicated to others by 
the same process of difficult induction through which they attain it them- 
selves, or rational conviction could not be produced in the minds of ths 
learners. ‘The task would therefore be hopeless as to the majority, both 
from their want of timeand intellectual capacity. But,if practicable, the 
Theistical system has no provision forsuch instruction. It neithermakes 
it the duty of some to teach, nor of others to learn. It has no authorized 
teachers; no day of rest from labour, on which to collect the auditors ; 
no authorized religious ordinances by which moral truth may be brought 
home to the ears and the hearts of men: and, if it had, its best know- 
ledge being rather contained in diffuse and hesitating speculation, than 
concentrated in maxims and first principles, embodied in a few plain 
words, which at once indicate some master mind fully adequate to the 
whole subject, and suddenly irradiate the understandings of the most 
listless and illiterate,—it would be taught in vain. 


per for the cure. The greatest part of mankind want leisure or capacity for 
demonstration, nor can carry a train of proofs, which in that way they must 
always depend upon for conviction, and cannot be required to assent to till they 
see the demonstration. Wherever they stick, the teachers are always put upon 
proof, and must clear the doubt by a thread of coherent deductions from the first 
principle, how long or how intricate soever that be. And you may as soon 
hope to have all the day labourers and tradesmen, the spinsters and dairy maids, 
perfect mathematicians, as to have them perfect in ethics this way: having plain 
commands is the sure and only course to bring them to obedience and practice: 
the greatest part cannot know, and therefore they must believe. Ard I ask, 
whether one coming from heaven in the power of God, in full and clear evidence 
and demonstration of miracles, giving plain and direct rules of morality and 
obedience, be not likelier to enlighten the bulk of mankind, and set them riglit 
in their duties, and bring them to do them, than by reasoning with them from 
general notions and principles of human reason ?” (Locke’s Reasonableness of 
Christianity.) 


- SIRST.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 1? 


Let us however suppose the truth discovered, the teachers of it ap. 
pointed, and days for the communication of instruction set apart. 
With what authority would these teachers be invested? They plead no 
commission. from Him whose will they affect to teach, and they work 
no miracles in confirmation of the truth of their doctrine. ‘That doc- 
trine cannot, from the nature of things, be mathematically demonstrated 
so as to enforce conviction, and it would therefore be considered, and 
justly considered, as the opinion of the teacher, and nothing but an 
opinion, to which every one might listen or not without any conscious- 
ness of violating an obligation, and which every one might and would 
receive as his own judgment agreed with or dissented from his «n- 
authorized teacher, or as his interests and passions might commend or 
disparage the doctrine so taught. (6) 

Facts are sufficiently in proof of this The sages of antiquity were 
moral teachers; they tounded schools; taney collected disciples; they 
placed their fame in their wisdom: yet there was little agreement 
among them, even upon the first principles of religion and morals ; 
and they neither generally reformed their own lives, nor those of 
others. This is acknowledged by Cicero: “Do you think that these 
things had any influence upon the men (a very few excepted,) who 
thonght and wrote and disputed about them? Who is there of all the 
philosophers, whose mind, life, and manners, were conformable to right 
reason? Who ever made his philosophy the law and rule of his life, 
and not a mere show of his wit and parts?) Who observed his own 
instructions, and lived in obedience to his cwn precepts? On the con- 
trary, many of them were slaves to filthy lusts, many to pride, many to 
covetousness,” &c. (7) 


(6) **Let it be granted, (though not true,) that all the moral precepts of the 
Gospel were known by somebody or other, among mankind before. But where, 
or how or of what use, is not considered. Suppose they may be picked up here 
and the re; some from Soton, and Bias, in Greece; others from TuLty, in Italy, 
and, to complete the work, let Conrucius as far as China be consulted, and ANa- 
cuarsis the Scythian contribute his share. What will all this do to give the 
world a complete morality, that may be to mankind the unquestionable rule of 
life ané manners? What would this amount to toward being a steady rule, a 
certain transcript of a law that we are under? Did the saying of Aristippus or 
Conrucius give it an authority? Was Zeno a lawgiver to mankind? If not, 
what he or any other philosopher delivered was but a saying of his. Mankind 
might hearken to it, or reject it, as they pleased, or as it suited their interest, 
passions, principles, or humours :—they were under no obligation: the opinion of 
this or that philosopher was of no autuority.” (Locxer’s Reasonableness, ¢-c.) 

‘‘The truths which the philosophers proved by speculative reason, were desti- 
tute of some more sensible authority to back them; and the precepts which they 
laid down, how reasonable soever in themselves, seemed still to want weight, and 
to be no more than PRECEPTS OF MEN.” (Dr. Sam. CLARKE.) 4 

(7; Sed hec eadem num censes apud eos ipsos valere, nisi admodum paucos, a 


Vot. | 2 


18 THEOLOG. C..L INSTITUTES. [PART 


» Such a system of moral direction and control, then, could it be 
formed, would bear no comparison to that which is provided by direct 
and external revelation, of which the doctrine, tho 1gh delivered by dif- 
ferent men, in different ages, is consentaneous throughout ; which is 
rendered authoritative by Divine attestation ; which consists in clear 
and legislative enunciation, and not in human speculation and laboriout 
inference; of which the teachers were as holy as their doctrine wag 
sublime ; and which in all ages has exerted a powerful moral influence 
upon the conduct of men. I know of but one Phedo and one Pole- 
mon throughout all Greece,” saith Orrern, “ who were ever made bet- 
ter by their philosophy; whereas Christianity hath brought back its 
myriads from vice to virtue.” 

All these considerations then still farther support the presumption, 
that the will of God has been the subject of express revelation to man, 
because such a declaration of it is the only one which can be conceived 
ADEQUATE; COMPLETE; OF COMMON APPREHENSION ; SUFFICIENTLY 
AUTHORITATIVE; AND ADAPTED TO THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF MANKIND. 





CHAPTER IV. 


Fartuer Proors oF THE WEAKNESS AND UNCERTAINTY oF HuMAN 
REASON. 


Tue opinion, that sufficient notices of the will and purposes of God 
with respect to man, may be collected by rational induction from his 
works and government, attributes too much to the power of human 
reason and the circumstantes under which, in that case, it must ne- 
cessarily commence its exercise. 

Human reason must be taken, as it is in fact, a weak and erring 
faculty, and as subject to have its operations suspended or disturbed 
by the influence of vicious principles and attachment to earthly things ; 
neither of which can be denied, however differently they may be 
accounted for. 

It is another consideration of importance that the exercise of reason 
is limited by our knowledge; in other words, that it must be furnished 
with subjects which it may arrange, compare, and judge: for beyond 
what it clearly conceives its power does not extend. 

It does not follow, that, because many doctrines in religion and many 
rules in morals carry clear and decided conviction to the judgment 
instantly upon their being proposed, they were discoverable, in the first 
instance, by rational induction ; any more than that the great and sim. 


quibus inventa, disputata, conscripta sunt 7? Quotus enim quisque philosophorum 
invenitur, qui sit ita moratus, ita animo ac vita constitutus, ut ratio postulat ? &e 
(Tusc. Quest. 2. 


FIRST. } THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 19 


ple truths of philosophy, which have been brought to light by the 
efforts of men of superior minds, were within the compass of ordinary 
understandings, because, after they were revealed by those who made 
the discovery, they instantly commanded the assent of almost all to 
whom they were proposed. The very first principles of what is called 
natural religion (8) are probably of this kind. The reason of man, 
though it should assent to them, though the demonstration of them 
should be now easy, may be indebted even for them to the revelation 
of a superior mind, and that mind the mind of God. (9) 


(8) The term natural religion is often used equivocally. ‘Some understand 
by it every thing in religion, with regard to truth and duty, which, when once 
discovered, may be clearly shown to have a real foundation in the nature and 
rélations of things, and which unprejudiced reason will approve, when fairly pro- 
posed and set in a proper light; and accordingly very fair and goodly schemes of 
natural religion have been drawn up by Christian philosophers and divines, in 
which they have comprehended a considerable part of what is contained in the 
Scripture revelation. In this view natural religion is not so called because it 
was originally discovered by natural reason, but because when once known it is 
what the reason of mankind duly exercised approves, as founded in truth and 
nature. Others take natura! religion to signify that religion which men discover 
in the sole exercise of their natural faculties, without higher assistance.” 
(LELAND.) 

(9) ‘* When truths are once known to us, though by tradition, we are apt to 
be favorable to our own parts, and ascribe to our own understanding the discov- 
ery of what, in reality, we borrowed from others; or, at least, finding we can 
prove what at first we learnt from others, we are forward to conclude it an obvi- 
ous truth, which, if we had sought, we could not have missed. Nothing seems 
hard to our understandings that is once known; and because what we see, we 
see with our own eyes, we are apt to overlook or forget the help we had from 
others who showed it us, and first made us see it, as if we were not at all 
beholden to them for those truths they opened the way to, and led us into; for, 
knowledge being only of truths that are perceived to be so, we are favorable 
enough to our own faculties to conclude that they, of their own strength, would 
have attained those discoveries without any foreign assistance, and that we know 
those truths by the strength and native light of our own minds, as they did from 
whom they received them by theirs,—only they had the luck to be before us. Thus 
the whole stock of human knowledge is claimed by every one as his private pos- 
session, as soon as he (profiting by others’ discoveries) has got it into his own 
mind: and so it is; but not properly by his own single industry, nor of his own 
acquisition. He studies, it is true, and takes pains to make a progress in what 
others have delivered; but their pains were of another sort who first brought 
those truths to light which he afterward derives from them. He that travels the 
roads now, applauds his own strength and legs, that have carried him so far in 
such a scantling of time, and ascribes all to his own vigour; little considering 
how much he owes to their pains who cleared the woods, drained the bogs, built 
the bridges, and made the ways passable, without which he might have toiled 
much with little progress. A great many things which we have been bred up 
in the belief of from our cradles and are now grown familiar, (and, as it were, 
natural to us under the Gospel,) we take for unquestionable obvious truths, and - 
wisily demonstrable, without considering how long we might have been in doubt, 


20 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


This is rendered the more probable, inasmuch as the great principles 
of all religion, the existence of God, the immortality of the human soul, 
the accountableness of man, the good or evil quality of the most impor- 
tant moral actions, have, by none whu have written upon them, by no 
legislator, poet, or sage of antiquity, however ancient, been represented 
as discoveries made by them in the course of rational investigation ; but 
they are spoken of as things commonly known among men, which they 
propose to defend, explain, demonstrate, or deny, according to their 
respective opinions. If we overlook the inspiration of the writings of 
- Moses, they command respect as the most ancient records in the world, 
and as embodying the religious opinions of the earliest ages ; but Moses 
nowhere pretends to be the author of any of these fundamental truths. 
The book of Genesis opens with the words, “ In the beginning God created 
the heavens and the earth ;” but here the term “ God” is used familiarly, 
and it is taken for granted, that both the name and the idea conveyed 
by it were commonly received by the people for whom Moses wrote. 

The same writer gives the history of ages much higher than his 
own, and introduces the patriarchs of the human race holding conver- 
sations with one another in which the leading subjects of religion and 
morals are often incidentally introduced ; but they are never presented 
to us in the form of discussion ; no patriarch, however high his anti- 
quity, represents himself as the discoverer of these first principles, 
though he might, as Noah, be a “ preacher” of that “ righteousness” 
which was established upon them. Moses mentions the antediluvians 
who were inventors of the arts of working metals, and of forming and 
playing upon musical instruments; but he introduces no one as the 
inventor of any branch of moral or religious science, though they are 
so much superior in importance to mankind. 

In farther illustration it may be observed, that, in point of fact, those 
views on the subjects just mentioned which, to the reason of all sober 
Theists, since the Christian revelation was given, appear the most 
clear and satisfactory, have been found nowhere since patriarchal 
times, except in the Scriptures, which profess to embody the true reli. 
gious traditions and revelations of all ages, or among those whose 
reason derived principles from these revelations on which to establish 
its inferences. 

We generally think it a truth, easily and convincingly demonstrated, 
that there is a God; and yet many of the philosophers of antiquity 


or ignorance of them had revelation been silent. Ana many others are beholden 
to revelation who do not acknowledge it. It is no diminishing to revelation, 
that reason gives its suffrage too to the truths revelation has discovered ; but it 
is our mistake to think, that because reason confirms them to us, we had the first 
certain knowledge of them from thence, and in that clear evidence we now pos- 
sess them.” (LockE.) 


FIRST. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 21 


speak doubtingly on this point, and some of them denied it. At the 
present day, not merely a few speculative philosophers in the heathen 
world, but the many millions of the human race who profess the religiou 
of Budhu, not only deny a Supreme First Cause, but dispute with 
subtlety and vehemence against the doctrine. 

We feel that our reason rests with full satisfaction in the doctrine that 
all things are created by one eternal and self-existent Being; but the 
Greek philosophers held that matter was eternally co-existent with God. 
This was the opinion of Plato, who has been called the Moses of phi- 
losophers. ‘Through the whole “ Timeus,” Plato supposes two eternal 
and independent causes of all things; one, that by which all things are 
made, which is God: the other, that from which all things are made, 
which is matter. Dr. Cudworth has in vain attempted to clear Plato of 
this charge. The learned Dr. Thomas Burnet, who was well acquainted 
with the opinions of the ancients, says that “the Ionic, Pythagoric, 
Platonic and Stoic schools all agreed in asserting the eternity of matter ; 
and that the doctrine, that matter was created out of nothing, seems to 
have been unknown to the philosophers, and is one of which they had 
no notion.” Aristotle asserted the eternity of the world, both in matter 
and form too, which was but an easy deduction from the former prin- 
ciple, and is sufficiently in proof of its Atheistical tendency. 

The same doctrine was extensively spread at a very ancient period 
throughout the east, and plainly takes away a great part of the founda. 
tion of those arguments for the existence of a Supreme Deity, on which 
the moderns have so confidently rested for the demonstration of the 
existence of God by rational induction, whether drawn from the works 
of nature, or from metaphysical principles; so much are those able 
works which have been written on this subject indebted to that revelation 
on which their authors too often close their eyes, for the very bases on 
which their most convincing arguments are built. The same Atheistical 
results logically followed from the ancient Magian doctrine of two 
eternal principles, one good and the other evil; a notion which also 
infected the Greek schools, as appears from the example of Plutarch, : 
and the instances adduced by him. 

No one enlightened by the Scriptures, whether he acknowledges his 
obligations to them or not, has ever been betrayed into so great an 
absurdity as to deny the individuality of the human soul ; and yet where 
the light of revelation has not spread, absurd and destructive to morals 
as this notion is, it very extensively prevails. The opinion that the 
human soul is a part of God, enclosed for a short time in matter, but 
still a portion of his essence, runs through much of the Greek philosophy 
It is still more ancient than that, and, at the present day, the same 
opinion destroys all idea of accountability among those who in India 
follow the Brahminical system. “The human soul is God, and the 


22 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


acts of the human soul are therefore the acts of God.” ‘This is the 
popular argument by which their crimes are justified. 

The doctrine of one supreme, all-wise, and uncontrollable Providence, 
commends itself to our reason as one of the noblest and most supporting 
of truths; but we are not to overlook the source from whence even 
those draw it, who think the reason of man equal to its full develope- 
ment. So far were pagans from being able to conceive so lofty a 
thought, that the wisest of them invented subordinate agents to carry on 
the affairs of the world; beings often divided among themselves, and 
subject to human passions; thereby destroying the doctrine of provi- 
dence, and taking away the very foundation of human trust in a 
Supreme Power. ‘This invention of subordinate deities gave birth to 
idolatry, which is sutliciently in proof both of its extent and antiquity. 

The beautiful and well-sustained series of arguments which have often 
in modern times been brought to support the presumption “that the 
human soul is immortal,” may be read with profit; but it is not to be 
accounted for, that those who profess to confine themselves to human 
reason in the inquiry, should argue with so much greater strength than 
the philosophers of ancient times, except that they have received assist- 
ance from a source which they are unfair enough not to acknowledge. 
Some fine passages on this subject may be collected from Plato, Cicero, 
Seneca, and others, but we must take them with others which express, 
sometimes doubt, and sometimes unbelief. With us this is a matter 
of general belief; but not so with the generality of either ancient or 
modern pagans. ‘lhe same darkness which obscured the glory of God, 
proportionably diminished the glory of man,—his true and proper 
immortality. The very ancient notion of an absorption of souls 
back again into the Divine Essence was with the ancients, what we 
know it to be now in the metaphysical system of the Hindoos, a denial 
of individual immortality ; nor have the demonstrations of reason done 
any thing to convince the other grand division of metaphysical pagans 
into which modern heathenism is divided, the followers of Budhu, who 
believe in the total annihilation of both men and gods after a series 
of ages,—a point of faith held probably by the majority of the present 
race of mankind. (1) 


(1) ‘The religion of Budhu,” says Dr. Davy, ‘is more widely extended than 
any other religion. It appears to be the religion of the whole of ‘Tartary, of 
China, of Japan, and their dependencies, and of all the countries between China 
an¢. the Burrampooter. 

“The Budhists do not believe in the existence of a Supreme Being, self existent 
and eternal, the creator and preserver of the universe: indeed, it is doubtful if 
they believe in the existence and operation of any cause beside fate and necessity, 
to which they seem to refer all changes in the moral and physical worid. They 
appear to be Materialists in the strictest sense of the term, and to have no notion 
of pure spirit or mind. Prane and hitta, life and intelligence, the most learned 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 23 


These instances might be enlarged; but they amply show that they 
who speak of the sufficiency of human reason in matters of morals and 
eligion neglect almost all the facts which the history of human opinion 
furn\zhes ; and that they owe all their best views to that fountain of 
nspiration from which they so criminally turn aside. For how other- 
wise can the instances we have just mentioned be explained? and how 
is it, that those fundamental principles in morals and religion, which 
modern philosophers have exhibited as demonstrable by the unassisted 
vewers of the human mind, were either held doubtfully, or connected 
with some manifest absurdity, or utterly denied by the wisest moral 
teachers among the Gentiles, who lived before the Christian revelation 
was given? ‘They had the same works of God to behold, and the same 
course of providence to reason from, to neither of which were they inat- 
tentive. They had intellectual endowments, which have been the ad- 
miration of all subsequent ages; and their reason was rendered acute and 
discriminative by the discipline of mathematical and dialectic science. 
They had every thing which the moderns have except the Brsur; and 
yet on points which have been generally settled among the moral phi- 
losophers of our own age as fundamental to natural religion, they had 
no just views, and no settled conviction. “The various apprehensions 
of wise men,” says Cicero, “will justify the doubtings and demurs of 
skeptics, and it will then be sufficient to blame them, si aut consenserint 
alit, aut erit inventus aliquis, qui quid verum sit invenerit, when others 
agree, or any one has found out the truth. We say not that nothing is 
true; but that some false things are annexed to all that is true, tanta 
sumilitudine ut ws nulla sit certa judicandi, et assentiendi nota, and that, 
with so much likeness, that there is no certain note of judging what is 
true, or assenting to it. We deny not that something may be true; 
percipt posse negamus, but we deny that it can be perceived so to 
be; for guid habemus in rebus bonis et malis exploratt, what have we 
certain concerning good and evil? Nor for this are we to be blamed, 
but NaTuRE, which has hidden the truth in the deep, natwram accusa 


of them appear to consider identical :—seated in the heart, radiating from thence 
to different parts of the body, like heat from a fire ;—uncreated, without beginning, 
at least that they know of;—capable of being modified by a variety of circum. 
stances, like the breath in different musical instruments ;—and like a vapour, 
eapible of passing from one body to another ;—and like a flame, liable to be 
extinguished and totally annihilated. Gods, demons, men, reptiles, even the 
minutest and most imperfect animalcules, they consider as similar beings, formed 
of the four elements—heat, air, water, and that which is tangible, and animated 
by prane and hitta. They believe that a man may become a god or a demon; or 
ihat a god may become a man or an animalcule; that ordinary death is merely 
a change of form; and that this change is almost infinite, and bounded only by” 
annihilation, which they esteem the acme of happiness!” (Account of Ceylon.) 


24 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. , [PART 


que in profundo veritatem penitus abstruserit.” (Vide De Nat. Deorum, 
lib, 1,n. 10,11. Acad. Qu. lib. 2, n. 66, 120.) 

On this subject Dr. Samuel Clarke, though so great an advocate of 
natural religion, concedes, that “of the philosophers, some argued them- 
selves out of the belief of the very being of a (rod; some by ascribing 
all things to chance, others to absolute fatality, equally subverted all true 
notions of religions, and made the doctrine of the resurrection of the 
dead, and a future judgment needless and impossible. Some professed 
open immorality, others by subtle distinctions patronized particular vices. 
The better sort of them, who were most celebrated, discoursed with the 
greatest reason, yet with much uncertainty and doubtfulness, concerning 
things of the highest importance,—the providence of God in governing 
the world, the immortality of the soul, and a future judgment.” 

If such facts prove the weakness and insufficiency of human reason, 
those just thoughts respecting God, his providence, his well, and a future 
state, which sometimes appear in the writings of the wisest heathen, are 
not however, on the contrary, to be attributed to its strength. Even 
if they were, the argument for the sufficiency of reason would not be 
much advanced thereby ; for the case would then be, thit the reason 
which occasionally reached the truth had not. firmness enough to hold 
it fast, and the pinion which sometimes bore the mind into fields of 
light, could not maintain it in its elevation. But it canrot even be 
admitted, that the truth which occasionally breaks forth in their works 
was the discovery of their own powers. There is much evidence to 
show, that they were indebted to a traditional knowledge much earlier 
than their own day, and that moral and religious knowledge among 
them received occasional and important accessions from the descend. 
ants of Abraham, a people who possessed records which, laying aside 
the question of their inspiration for the present, all candid Theists 
themselves will acknowledge, contain noble and just views of God, and 
a correct morality. While it cannot be proved that human reason 
made a single discovery in either moral or religious truth; it-may be 
satisfactorily established, that just notions as to both were placed 
within its reach, which it first obscured, and then corrupted. 


CHAPTER V. 


The Origin of those Truths which are found in the Writings and 
Religious Systems of the Heathen. 


Wx have seen that some of the leading truths of religion and morals, 
which are adverted to by heathen writers, or assumed in heathen sys- 
tems, are spoken of as truths previously known to the world, and with 
which mankind were familiar. Also, that no legislator, poet, or philoso. 


fIRST.} THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 25 


pher of antiquity, ever pretended to the discovery of the doctrines of the - 
existence of a God, of providence, a future state, and of ‘the rules by 
which actions are determined to be good or evil, whether these opinions 
were held by them with full conviction of their certainty, or only doubt- 
‘ully. ‘That they were transmitted by tradition from an earlier age ; 
or were brought from some collateral source of information ; or that 
they flowed from both; are therefore the only rational conclusions. 

To tradition the wisest of the heathen often acknowledge themselves 
indebted. 

A previous age of superior truth, rectitude, and happiness, sometimes 
called the golden age, was a commonly received notion among them. 
It is at least as high as Hesiod, who rivals Homer in antiquity. It was 
likewise a common opinion, that sages existed in ages anterior to their 
own, who received knowledge from the gods, and communicated it to 
men. The wisest heathens, notwithstanding the many great things said 
of nature and reason, derive the origin, obligation, and efficacy of law 
from the gods alone. “No mortal,” says Plato in his republic, “ can 
make laws to purpose.” Demosthenes calls law supnua xxi dwpov Oss, 
“ the invention and gift of God.” ‘They speak of vowos aypapor, “ unwrit- 
ten laws,” and ascribe both them, and the laws which were introduced 
by their various legislators, to the gods. Xenophon represents it as the 
opinion of Socrates, that the unwritten laws received over the whole 
earth, which it was impossible that all mankind, as being of different 
languages, and not to be assembled in one place, should make, were given 
by the gods. (2) Plato is express on this subject: “ After a certain 


(2) Xen. Mem. lib. 4, cap. 4, sect. 19, 20.—To the same effect is that noble 
passage of Cicero cited by Lactantius out of his work De Republica. 

‘¢ Est quidem vera lex, recta ratio, nature congruens, diffusa in omnes, constans, 
sempiterna, que vocet ad officium jubendo, vetando, a fraude deterreat ; que tamen 
neque probos frustra jubet, aut vetat; nec improbos jubendo aut vetando movet. 
Huic legi nec abrogari fas est; nec derogari ex hac aliquid licet; neque tota abro. 
gari potest. Nec vero aut per senatum, aut per populum solvi hac lege possumus;,. 
neque est querendus explanator, aut interpres ejus alius. Nec enim alia lex Ro. 
me, alia Athenis, alia nunc, alia posthac ; sed et omnes gentes, et omni tempore, 
uma lex et sempiterna et immutabilis continebit; unnsque erit communis quasi 
magister et imperator omnium Deus, ille legis hujus inventor, disceptator, lator ; 
cui qui non parebit, ipse se fugiet, ac naturam hominis aspernabitur; atque hoc 
ipso luet maximas peenas, etiamsi cetera supplicia, que putantur, effugerit :’— 
From which it is clear that Cicero acknowledged a law antecedent to all human 
civil institutions, and independent of them, binding upon all, constant and per- 
petual, the same in all times and places, not one thing at Rome, and another at 
Athens; of an authority so high, that no human power had the right to alter or 
annul it; having God for its author, in his character of universal Master and 
Sovercign ; taking hold of the very consciences of men, and following them with 
its animadversions, though they should escape the hand of man, and the penaltics 
of human codes. 


26 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. _ [PART 


flood, which but few escaped, on the increase of mankind, they had neither 
letters, writing, nor laws, but obeyed the manners and institutions of their 
fathers as laws : but when colonies separated from them, they took an 
elder for their leader, and in their new settlements retained the customs 
of their ancestors, those especially which related to their gods: and thus 
transmitied them to their posterity ; they imprinted them on the minds of 
their sons ; and they did the same to their children. 'This was the origi 
of right laws, and of the different forms of government.” (De Leg. 3.) 

This so exactly harmonizes with the Mosaic account, as to the flood 
of Noah, the origin of nations, and the Divine institution of religion 
and laws, that either the patriarchal traditions embodied in the writ- 
ings of Moses, had gone down with great exactness to the times of 
Plato ; or the writings of Moses were known to him; or he had ga- 
thered the substance of them, in his travels, from the Egyptian, the 
Chaldean, or the Magian philosophers. . 

Nor is this an unsupported hypothesis. The evidence is most abun 
dant, that the primitive source from whence every great religious and 
moral truth was drawn, must be fixed in that part of the world where 
Moses places the dwelling of the patriarchs of the human race, who 
walked with God, and received the law from his mouth. (3) ‘There, in 
the earliest times, civilization and polity were found, while the rest of the 
earth was covered with savage tribes,—a sufficient proof that Asia was 
the common centre from whence the rest of mankind dispersed, who, as 
they wandered from these primitive seats, and addicted themselves more 
to the chase than to agriculture, became in most instances barbarous. (4) 

In the multifarious and bewildering superstitions of all nations, we 
also discover a very remarkable substratum of common tradition and 
religious faith. 

The practice of sacrifice, which may at once be traced into all nations, 
ind to the remotest antiquity, affords an eminent proof of the common 


(3) ‘“‘ The east was the source of knowledge from whence it was communicated 
to the western parts of the world. There the most precious remains of ancient 
tradition were found. Thither the most celebrated Greek philosophers travelled 
in quest of science, or the knowledge of things Divine ard human, and thither 
the lawgivers had recourse in order to their being instructed in laws and civil 
policy.” (LELAND.) 

(4) The speculations of infidels as to the gradual progress of the original men 
from the savage life, and the invention of language, arts, laws, &c, have been too 
much countenanced by philosophers bearing the name cof Christ; some of them 
even holding the office of teachers of his religion. The writings of Moses suffi 
ciently show that there never was a period in which the original tribes of men 
were in a savage state; and the gradual process of the developement of a higher 
condition is a chimera. ‘To those who profess to believe the Scriptures, their 

_ testimony ought to be sufficient : to those who do not, they are at least as good 
history as any other. 


F(RST.) THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 27 


origin of religion; inasmuch as no reason drawn from the nature of the 
rite itself, or the circumstances of men, can be given for the univer 
sality of the practice: and as it is clearly a positive institute, and op. 
posed to the interests of men, it can only be accounted for by an 
injunction, issued at a very early period of the world, and solemnly im- 
posed. ‘This injunction, indeed, received a force, either from its origi- 
nal appointment, or from subsequent circumstances, from which the 
human mind could never free itself. “There continued,” says Dr. 
Shuckford, “ for a long time among the nations usages which show that 
there had been an ancient universal religion; several traces of which 
appeared in the rites and ceremonies which were observed in religious 
worship. Such was the custom of sacrifices expiatory and precatory ; 
both the sacrifices of animals, and the obiations of wine, oil, and the 
fruits and products of the earth.' These and other things which were 
in use among the patriarchs, obtained also among the Gentiles.” 

The events, and some of the leading opinions of the earliest ages, 
mentioned in Scripture, may also be traced among the most barbarous, as 
well as in the Oriental, the Grecian, and the Roman systems of mytho- 
logy. Such are the FORMATION OF THE WORLD; the FALL AND COR- 
RUPTION OF MAN; the hostility of a powerful and supernatural agent of 
wickedness, under his appropriate and Scriptural emblem, the SerPent ; 
the DESTRUCTION OF THE WORLD BY WATER; the REPEOPLING OF IT BY 
THE sons OF Noau; the EXPECTATION OF ITS FINAL DESTRUCTION BY 
FIRE; and, above all, the promise of a great and Divine DELIVERER. (5) 

The only method of accounting for this, is, that the same traditions 
were transmitted from the progenitors of the different families of man- 
kind after the flood; that in some places they were strengthened, and 
the impressions deepened by successive revelations, which assumed the 
first traditions, as being of Divine original, for their basis, and thus re. 
newed the knowledge which had formerly been communicated, at the 
very time they enlarged it: and farther, that from the written revela- 
tions which were afterward made to one people, some rays of reflected 
light were constantly glancing upon the surrounding nations. 

Nor are we at a loss to trace this communication of truth from a 
common source to the Gentile nations; and also to show that they 
actually did receive accessions of information, both directly and indi. 
rectly, from a people who retained the primitive theological system in 
its greatest purity. 

We shall see sufficient reasons, when we come to speak on that sub- 
ject, to conclude that all mankind have descended from one common pair. 

If man is now a moral agent, the first man must be allowed to have 
been a moral agent; and, as such, under rules of obedience ; in which 


2 


(5) See note A at the end of this chapter. 


28 THEOLOGICAL INSILITUTES. [PART 


rules it is far more probable that he should be instructed by his Maker 
by means of direct communication, than that he should be left to collect 
the will of his Maker from observation and experience. Those who 
deny the Scripture account of the introduction of death into the world, 
and think the human species were always liable to it, are bound to admit 
a revelation from God to the first pair as to the wholesomeness of cer- 
tain fruits, and the destructive habits of certain animals, or our first 
progenitors would have been far more exposed to danger from delete 
rious fruits, &c, and in a more miserable condition through their fears 
than any of their descendants, because they were without experience, 
and could have no information. (6) But it is far more probable, that 
they should have express information as to the will of God concerning 
their conduct ; for until they had settled, by a course of rational induc- 
tion, what was right, and what wrong, they could not, properly speak- 
ing, be moral agents; and, from the difficulties of such an inquiry, 
especially until they had had a long experience of the steady course of 
nature, and the effect of certain actions upon themselves and society, 
they might possibly arrive at very different conclusions. (7) 

But in whatever way the moral and religious knowledge of the first 
man was obtained, if he is allowed to have been under an efficient law, 
he must at least have known, in order to the right regulation of himself, 
every truth essential to religion, and to personal, domestic, and social 
‘morals. ‘The truth on these subjects was as essential to him as to his 
descendants, and more especially because he was so soon to be the head 
and the paternal governor, by a natural relation, of a numerous race, 
and to possess, by virtue of that office, great influence over them. If 
we assume, therefore, that the knowledge of the tirst inan was taught to 
his children, and it were the greatest absurdity to suppose the contrary, 
then, whether he received his information on the principal doctrines of 
religion, and the principal rules of morals, by express revelation from 
God, or by the exercise of his own natural powers, all the great princi- 
ples of religion, and of personal, domestic, and social morals, must have 
been at once communicated to his children, immediately descending from 
him ; and we clearly enough see the reason why the earliest writers on 
these subjects never pretend to have been the discoverers of the leading 
truths of morals and religion, but speak of them as opinions familiar te 
men, and generally received. ‘This primitive religious and moral sys 
tem, as far as regards first principles, and all their important particular 
applications, was also complete, or there had been neither efficient reli- 
gion nor morality in the first ages, which is contrary to all tradition, and 


(6) See Detaney’s Revelation Examined with Candour, Dissertations 1 and 2. 


(7) ‘It is very probable,” says Puffendorf, “that God taught the first men the 
eb.ief heads of natural law.” 


cIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 29 


to all history; and that this system was actually transmitted, is clear 
‘rom this, that the wisdom of very early ages consisted nut so much in 
natural and speculative science, as in moral notions, rules of conduct, 
and an acquaintance with the opinions of the wise of still earlier periods, 

The few persons through whom this system was transmitted to 
Noah, for in fact Methuselah was contemporary both with Adam and 
Noah, rendered any great corruption impossible; and therefore the 
crimes charged upon the antediluvians are violence and other immo- 
ralities, rather than the corruption of truth ; and Noah was “a preacher 
ot righteousness,” rather than a restorer of doctrine. 

The flood, (8) being so awful and marked a declaration of God’s anger 
against the violation of the laws of this primitive religion, would give 
great force and sanction te it, as a religious system, in the minds of 
Noah’s immediate descendants. The existence of God; his providence; 
his favour to the good, his anger against evil doers; the great rules 
of justice and mercy ; the practice of a sacrificial worship ; the obser- 
vance of the Sabbath ; the promise of a Deliverer, and other similar 
tenets, were among the articles and religious rites of this primitive sys- 
tem: nor can any satisfactory account be given, why they were trans- 
mitted to so many people, in different parts of the world; why they have 
continued to glimmer through the darkness of paganism to this day ; 
why we find them more or less recognized in the mythology, traditions, 
and customs of almost all ages ancient and modern, except that they, 
received some original sanction of great efficacy, deeply fixing them in 
the hearts of the patriarchs of all the families of men. Those who deny 
the revelations contained in the Scriptures, have no means of account. 
ing for these facts, which in themselves are indisputable. They have 
no theory respecting them which is not too childish to deserve serious 
refutation, and they usually prefer to pass them over in silence. But 
‘the believer in the Bible can account for them, and he alone. ‘The de. 
struction of wicked men by the flood put the seal of Heaven upon the 
religious system transmitted from Adam; and under the force of this 
Divine and unequivocal attestation of its truth, the sons and descend. 
ants of Noah went forth into their different settlements, bearing for 
ages the deep impression of its sanctity and authority. The impres- 


(8) Whatever may be thought respecting the circumstances of the flood as men 
tio1ed by Moses, there is nothing in that event, considered as the punishment of 
a guilty race, and as giving an attestation of God’s approbation of right principles 
aud a right conduct, to which a consistent Theist can object. For if the will 
of God is to be collected from observing the course of nature and providence, 
such signal and remarkable events in his government as the deluge, whether uni. 
versal or only co-extensive with the existing race of men, may be expected to 
occur; and especially when an almost universal punishment, as connected with 
an almost universil wickedness, so strikingly indicated an observant and a right. 
eis government 


30 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PAR{ 


sion, it is true, at length gave way to vice, superstition, and false phi- 
losophy ; but superstition perverted truth rather than displaced it; and 
the doctrines, the history, and even the hopes of the first ages, were 
never entirely banished even from those fables which became baleful 
substitutes for their simplicity. 

In the family of Abraham the true God was acknowledged. Melchi- 
zedec was the sovereign of one of the nations of Canaan, and priest of 
the most high God, and his subjects must therefore have been worship- 
pers of the true Divinity. Abimelech the Philistine and his people, both 
in Abraham’s days and in Isaac’s, were also worshippers of Jehovah. 
and acknowledged the same moral principles which were held sacred 
in the elect family. The revelations and promises made to Abraham 
would enlarge the boundaries of religious knowledge, both among the 
descendants of Ishmael, and those of his sons by Keturah; as those 
made to Shem would, with the patriarchal theology, be transmitted to 
his posterity—the Persians, Assyrians, and Mesopotamians. (9) In 
Egypt, even in the days of Joseph, he and the king of Egypt speak of 
the true Gop, as of a being mutually known and acknowledged. Upon 
the arrival of the Israelites in Canaan, they found a few persons in that 
perhaps primitive seat of idolatry, who acknowledged “ Jehovah to be 
God in heaven above, and in the earth beneath.” 'Through the branch 
of Esau the knowledge of the true religion would pass from the family 
, of Isaac, with its farther illustrations in the covenants made with Abra. 
ham, to his descendants. Job and his friends, who probably lived be- 
tween Abraham and Moses, were professors of the patriarchal religion - 
and their discourses show, that it was both a sublime and a comprehen 
sive system. The plagues of Egypt and the miraculous escape of the. 
Israelites, and the destruction of the Canaanitish nations, were all parts 
of an awful controversy between the true God and the idolatry spread. 
ing in the world; and could not fail of being largely noised abroad’ 
among the neighbouring nations, and of making the religion of the 
Israelites known. (JEnK1N’s Reasonableness of Christianity, vol. i, chap. 
2.) Balaam, a Gentile prophet, intermixes with his predictions many 
brief but eloquent assertions of the first principles of religion; the om- 
nipotence of Deity, his universal providence, and the immutability of 
his counsels ; and the names and epithets which he applies to the Su. 
preme Being, are, as Bishop Horsley observes, the very same which are 
used by Moses, Job, and the inspired writers of the Jews, namely, God, 
the Almighty, the Most High, and Jehovah; which is a proof, that, gross 
as the corruptions of idolatry were now become, the patriarchal reli- 
gion was not forgotten nor its language become obsolete. 


(9) See Bishop Horstey’s Dissertations before referred to; and LELAND’s View 
ef the Necessity of Revelation, part i, chap. 2 


FIRST. } fHEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 31 


The frequent and public restorations of the Israelites to the principles 
of the patriarchal religion, after they had lapsed into idolatry, and fallen 
under the power of other nations, could not fail to make their peculiar 
opinions known among those with whom they were so often in relations 
of amity or war, of slavery or dominion. We have evidence collateral 
to that of the Scriptures, that the building of the celebrated temple of 
Solomon, and the fame of the wisdom of that monarch, produced not 
oaly a wide-spread rumour, but, as it was intended by Divine wisdom 
and goodness, moral effects upon the people of distant nations, and that 
the Abyssinians received the Jewish religion after the visit of the queen 
of Sheba, the principles of that religion being probably found to accord 
with those ancient traditions of the patriarchs, which remained among 
them. (1) The intercourse between the Jews and the states of Syria 
and Babylon on the one hand, and Egypt on the other, powers which 
rose to great eminence and influence in the ancient world, was main. 
tained for many ages. Their frequent captivities and dispersions would 
tend to preserve in part, and in part to revive, the knowledge of the 
once common and universal faith; for we have instances, that in the 
worst periods of their history there were among the captive Israelites 
those who adhered with heroic steadfastness to their own religion. We 
have the instance of the female captive in the house of Naaman the 
Syrian, and, at a later period, the sublime example of the three Hebrew 
youths, and of Daniel in the court of Nebuchadnezzar. The decree of 
this prince, after the deliverance of Shadrach and his companions, ought 
not to be slightly passed over. It contained a public proclamation of 
the supremacy of Jehovah, in opposition to the gods of his country ; and 
that monarch, after his recovery from a singular disease, became him. 
self a worshipper of the true God; both of which are circumstances 
which could not but excite attention, among a learned and curious peo- 
ple, to the religious tenets of the Jews. We may add to this also, that 
great numbers of the Jews preserving their Scriptures, and publicly 
worshipping the true God, never returned from the Babylonish captivity ; 
but remained in various parts of that extensive empire after it was con- 


(1) The princes of Abyssinia claim descent from Menilek, the son of Solomon 
by the queen of Sheba. The Abyssinians say she was converted to the Jewish 
religion. The succession is hereditary in the line of Solomon, and the device of 
their kings is a lion passant, proper upon a field gules, and their motto, ‘ The 
lion of the race of Solomon and tribe of Judah hath overcome.” The Abyssinian 
eunuch who was met by Philip was not properly a Jewish proselyte, dut an Abys. 
sinian believer in Moses and the prophets. Christianity spread in this country 
at an early period; but many of the inhabitants to this day are of the Jewish 
religion. Tyre also must have derived an accession of religious information 
from its intercourse with the Israelites in the time of Solomon, and we find 
Hiram the king blessing the Lord God of Israel ‘‘as the Maker of heaven and 
earth.” 


32 ".LEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. {PAR? 


quered by the Persians. The Chaldean philosophic schools, to which 
many cf the Greek sages resorted for instruction, were therefore never 
without the means of acquaintance with the theological system of the 
Jews, however degenerate in process of time their wise men became, 
by addicting themselves to judicial astrology ; and to the same sacred 
source the conquest of Babylon conducted the Persians. 

Cyrus, the celebrated subverter of the Babylonian monarchy, was ot 
the Magian religion, whose votaries worshipped God under the emblem 
of fire, but held an independent and eternal principle of darkness and 
evil. He was, however, somewhat prepared by his hostility to idols, to 
listen to the tenets of the Jews; and his favour to them sufficiently 
shows, that the influence which Daniel’s character, the remarkable facts 
which had occurred respecting him at the courts of Nebuchadnezzar 
and Belshazzar, and the predictions of his own success by Isaiah, had 
exerted on his mind, was very great. In his decree for the rebuilding 
of the temple, recorded in Kzra, chap. i, and 2 Chron. xxxvi, 23, he 
acknowledges “ Jehovah to be the God of heaven,” who had given him 
his kingdom, and had charged him to rebuild the temple. Nor could 
this testimony in favour of the God of the Jews be without effect upon 
his subjects ; one proof of which, and of the influence of Judaism upon 
the Persians, is, that in a short time after his reign, a considerable im- 
provement in some particulars, and alteration in others, took place in 
the Magian religion by an evident admixture with it of the tenets and 
ceremonies of the Jews. (2) And whatever improvements the theology 
of the Persians thus received, and they were not few nor unimportant ; 
whatever information they acquired as to the origin of the world, the 
events of the first ages, and questions of morals and religion, subjects 
after which the ancient philosophers made keen and eager inquiries ; 
they could not but be known to the learned Greeks, whose intercourse 
with the Persians was continued for so long a period, and be trans. 
mitted also into that part of India into which the Persian monarchs 
pushed their conquests. 

It is indeed unquestionable, that the credit in which the Jews stood, 
in the Persian empire ; the singular events which brought them into no. 
tice with the Persian monarchs ; the favour they afterward experienced 
from Alexander the Great and his successors, who reigned in Egypt, 
where they became so numerous, and so generally spoke the Greek, 
that a translation of the Scriptures into that language was rendered 
necessary ; and their having in most of the principal cities of the Ro- 
man empire, even when most extended, indeed in all the cities which 
were celebrated for refinement and philosophy, their synagogues and 
public worship, in Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, at Athens, Corinth, 


(2) See note B at the end of this chapter. 


FIRST. 4 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 33 


Ephesus, &c, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, and that for a tong 
time before the Christian era,—rendered their tenets very widely known: 
and as these events took place after their final reformation from idolatry, 
the opinions by which they were distinguished were those substantially 
which are taught in the Scriptures. ‘The above statements, to say 
nothing of the fact, that the character, office, opinions, and writings of 
Moses were known to many of the ancient philosophers and historians, 
who mention him by name, and describe the religion of the Jews, are 
sufficient to account for those opinions and traditions we occasionally 
meet with in the writings of the Greek and Roman sages which have 
the greatest correspondence with truth, and agree best with the Holy 
Scriptures. They flowed in upon them from many channels, branching 
out at different times from the fountain of truth; but they were received 
by them generally as mere traditions or philosophic notions, which they 
thought themselves at liberty to adopt, reject, modify, or pervert, as the 
principles of their schools or their own fancy led them. 

Let then every question which respects inspiration, miracles, 
prophecies, be for the present omitted: the following conclusions mav 
properly close these observations :— 

1. That as a history of early opinions and events, the Scriptures have 
at least as much authority as any history of ancient times whatever ; 
nay, the very idea of their sacredness, whether well founded or not, 
renders their historical details more worthy of credit, because that idea 
led to their more careful preservation. 

2. That their history is often confirmed by ancient pagan traditions 
and histories; and in no material point, or on any good evidence, 
contradicted. 

3. ‘That those fundamental principles of what is called natural 
religion, which are held by sober Theists, and by them denominated 
rational, the discovery of which they attribute to the unassisted un- 
derstanding of man, are to be found in the earliest of these sacred 
writings, and are there supposed to have existed in the world previous 
to the date of those writings themselves. 

4. That a religion founded on common notions and common traditions, 
somprehensive both in doctrines and morals, existed in very early periods 
of the world; and that from the agreement of almost all mythological sys- 
tems, in certain doctrines, rites, and traditions, it is reasonable to believe, 
that this primitive theology passed in some degree into all nations. 

5. That it was retained most perfectly among those of the descend- 
ants of Abraham who formed the Israelitish state, and subsisted as a 
pation collaterally with the successive great empires of antiquity for 
many ages. 

6. That the frequent dispersions of great numbers of that people, ~ 
either by war or from choice, and their residence in or near the seats 


Vot. I 3 


34 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. ‘PART 


of ancient learning with their sacred booxs, and in the habit of observing 
their public worship, as in Chaldea, Egypt, Persia, and other parts of 
the ancient world, and the signal notice into which they and their opin 
ions were occasionally brought, could not but make their cosmogony, 
theology, laws, and history, very extensively known. 

7. That the spirit of inquiry in many of the ancient philosophers of 
different countries, led them to travel for information on these very sub- 
jects, and often into those countries where the patriarchal religion had 
formerly existed in great purity, and where the tenets of the Jews, which 
tended to revive or restore it, were well known. 

8. That there is sufficient evidence that these tenets were in fact 
known to many of the sages of the greatest name, and to schools of the 
greatest influence, who, however, regarding them only as traditions or 
philosophical opinions, interwove such of them as best agreed with their 
views into their own systems, and rejected or refined upon others, so 
that no permanent and convincing system of morals and religion was, 
after all, wrought out among themselves, while they left the populace 
generally to the gross ignorance and idolatry in which they were 
involved. (3) 


(3) The readiness of the philosophers of antiquity to seize upon every notion 
which could aid them in their speculations, is manifest by the use which those 
of them who lived when Christianity began to be known, and to acquire credit, 
made of its discoveries to give greater splendour to their own systems. The thirst 
of knowledge carried the ancient sages to the most distant persons and places in 
search of wisdom, nor did the later philosophers any more than modern infidels 
neglect the superior light of Christianity, when brought to their own doors, but 
they were equally backward to acknowledge the obligation. ‘* As the ancients,” 
says Justin Martyr, ‘‘had borrowed from the prophets, so did the moderns from 
the Gospel.” 'Tecullian observes in his Apology, ‘* Which of your poets, which of 
your sophists, have not drunk from the fountains of the prophets? It is from 
these sacred sources likewise that your philosophers have refreshed their thirsty 
spirits; and if they found any thing in the Holy Scriptures to please their fancy, 
or to serve their hypotheses, they turned it to their own purpose, and made it serve 
their curiosity; not considering these writings to be sacred and unalterable, nor 
understanding their sense ; every one taking or leaving, adopting or remodelling, 
as his imagination led him. Nor do I wonder that the philosophers played such 
foul tricks with the Old Testament, when I find some of the same generation 
among ourselves who have made as bold with the New, and composed a deadly 
mixture of Gospel and opinion, led by a philosophizing vanity.” 

It was from conversing with a Christian that Epictetus learned to reform the 
doctrine, and abase the pride of the Stoics; nor is it to be imagined that Marcus 
Antoninus, Maximus Tyrius, and others, were ignorant of the Christian doctrine. 

Rousseau admits, that the modern philosopher derives his better notions on many © 
subjects from those very Scriptures, which he reviles; from the early impressions 
of education ; from living and conversing zn a Christian country, where those 
doctrines are publicly taught, and where, in spite of himself, he :mbibes some 
portion of that religious knowledge which the sacred writings have every where 
diffused. (Works, vol. ix, p. 71; 1764.) . 


fIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 35 


9. Finally, that so far from there being any evidence thaf any of 
those fundamental truths of religion or moraJs, which may occasionally 
appear in their writings, were discovered by their unassisted reason, 
we can trace them to an earlier age, and can show that they had the 
means of access to higher sources of information; while on the other 
hand it may be exhibited as a proof of the weakness of the human 
mind, and the corruptness of the human heart, that they generally 
involved in doubt the great principles which they thus received ; built 
upon them fanciful systems destructive of their moral efficacy; and 
mixed them with errors of the most deteriorating character. (4) 

The last observation will be more fully illustrated in the ensuing 
chapter. 


(4) See note C at the end of this chapter. 


Norse A.—Page 27. 


TuE illustration of the particulars mentioned in the paragraph, from whicn re. 
ference is made to this note, may be given under different heads. 

Tue ForMATION oF THE WorLD From Cuaotic Marrer.—Some remains of the 
sentiments of the ancient Chaldeans are preserved in the pages of Syncellus from 
Berosus and Alexander Polyhistor ; and when the tradition is divested of its 
fabulous dress. we may trace in the account a primordial watery chaos, a separation 
of the darkness from light, and of earth from heaven, the production of man froin 
the dust of the earth, and an infusion of Divine reason into the man so formed.- 
The cosmogony of the Phenicians, as detailed by Sanchoniatho, makes the prin- 
ciple of the universe a dark air, and a turbulent chaos. The ancient Persians 
taught that God created the world at six different times, in manifest allusion to 
the six days’ work as described by Moses. In the Institutes of Menu, a Hindoo 
tract, supposed by Sir William Jones to have been composed 1280 years before the 
Christian era, the universe is represented as involved in darkness, when the sole, 
self-existing power, himself undiscerned, made the world discernible. With a 
thought he first created the waters, which are called Nara, or the Spirit of God ; 
and since they were his first ayana, or place of motion, he is thence named 
Narayana, or moving on the waters. The order of the creation in the ancient 
traditions of the Chinese is,—the heavens were first formed; the foundations of 
the earth were next laid; the atmosphere was then diffused round the habitable 
globe, and last of all, man was created. The formation of the world from chaos 
may be discovered in the traditions of our Gothic ancestors.—See the Edda, and 
Faber’s Hore Mosaica, vol. i, page 3. 

In the ancient Greek philosophy we trace the same tradition, and Plato clearly 
borrowed the materials of his account of the origin of things, either from Moses, 
or from traditions which had proceeded from the same source. Moses speaks of 
God in the plural form, ‘In the beginning Gods created the heaven and the earth,” 
and Plato has a kind of trinity in his ro ayafov, “the good,” ves or ‘ intellect,” who 
was properly the demiurgus, or former of the world, and his Psyche, or universal 
mundane soul, the cause of all the motion which is in the world. He also repre 
ents the first matter out of which the universe was formed as a rude cheos. Ip 


36 fHEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


-he Greek and Latin poets we have frequent allusions to the same faet, and in 
some of them highly poetic descriptions of the chaotic sate of the world, and its 
reduction to order. When America was discovered, traditions, bearing a very 
remarkable resemblance to the history of Moses on various subjects, were found 
umong the semi-civilized nations of that continent. Gomara states in his listory, 
that the Peruvians believed that, at the beginning of the world, there came from 
the north a being named Con, who levelled mountains and raised hills sclely by 
the word of his mouth; that he filled the earth with men and women whom he 
had created, giving them fruits and bread, and all things necessary for their sub. 
sistence; but that, being offended with their transgressions, he deprived them 
of the blessings which they had originally enjoyed, and afflicted their lands witl: 
sterility. 

‘‘The number of days employed in the work of creation,” says Mr. Faber 
‘and the Divine rest on the seventh day, produced that peculiar measure of time, 
the week, which is purely arbitrary, and which does not spring, like a day, ora 
month, or a year, from the natural motions of the heavenly bodies. Hence the 
general adoption of the hebdomadal period is itself a proof how widely a know. 
ledge of the true cosmogonical system was diffused among the posterity of Noah.” 
Thus, in almost every part of the globe, from Europe to the shores of India, ana 
anciently among the Greeks, Romans, and Goths, as well as among the Jews, we 
find the week used as a familiar measure of time, and some traces of the Sabbath. 


Tue Fai or Man.—That the human race were once innocent and happy, is 
an opinion of high antiquity, and great extent among the Gentile nations. The 
passages to this effect in the classical poets are well known. It is asserted in the 
Edda, the record of the opinions of our Scythian forefathers. ‘There can be 
little doubt,” sys Maurice, in his History of Hindostan, ‘‘ but that by the Satya. 
age, or age of perfection, the Brachmins obscurely allude to the state of perfection 
and happiness enjoyed by man in paradise. Then justice, truth, philanthropy, 
were practised among all the orders and classes of mankind.” That man is a 
fallen creature, is now the universal belief of this class of pagans; and the de. 
generacy of the human soul, its native and hereditary degeneracy, runs through 
much of the Greek philosophy. The immediate occasion of the fall, the frailty 
of the woman, we find also alluded to equally in classical fable, in ancient Gothic 
traditions, and among various barbarous tribes. A curious passage to this effect 
occurs in Campbell’s Travels among the Boschuana Hottentots. 


Tue Serrent.—The agency of an evil and malignant spirit is found also in 
these widely-extended ancient traditions. Little doubt can be entertained but 
that the generally received notion of good and evil demons grounded itself upon 
the Scripture account of good and evil angels. Serpent worship was exceedingly 
general, especially in Egypt and the east, and this is not to be accounted for but 
as it originated from a superstitious fear of the malignant demon, who, under 
that animal form, brought death into the world, and obtained a destructive 
dominion over men. That in ancient sculptures and paintings, the serpent sym- 
bol is sometimes emblematical of wisdom, eternity, and other moral ideas, may 
be allowed; but it often appears connected with representations which prove that 
under this form the evil principle was worshipped, and that human. sacrifices 
were offered to gratify the cruelty of him who was a ‘murderer from the begin- 
ning.” In the model of the tomb of Psammis, made by Mr. Belzoni, and recently 
exhibited in London, and in the plates which accompany his work on Egypt, are 
seen various representations of monstrous serpents with the tribute of human 
heads which had been offered to them. This .8 still more strikingly exemplifeed 
in a copy of part of the interior of an Egyptian tomb. at Biban al Melook in 


fIRST.} THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 37 


Richardson’s Travels in Egypt. Before an enormous serpent three men are 
represented on their knees, with their heads just struck off by the executioner, 
‘while the serpent erects his crest to a level with their throats, ready to drink 
the stream of life as it gurgles from their veins.’ This was probably the serpent 
Typhon, of the ancient Egyptians; the same as the Python of the Greeks ; anc 
as observed by Mr. Faber, ‘the notion that the Python was oracular, may have 
sprung from a recollection of the vocal responses, which the tempter gave to Eve 
under the borrowed figure of that reptile.’ By consulting Moore’s Hindu Pan. 
theon, it will be seen that the serpent Caliya is represented as the decided enemy 
of the mediatorial God, Krishna, whom he persecutes, and on whom he inflicts 
various sufferings, though he is at length vanquished. Krishna, pressed within 
the folds of the serpent, and then triumphing over him in bruising his head be- 
neath his feet, is the subject of a very ancient Hindoo has relief, and carries with 
it its own interpretation. 


In the Edda, Fab. 16, “the great serpent is said to be an emanation from 
Loke, the evil principle; and hela, or hell or death, in a poetical vein of allegory 
not unworthy of our own Milton, is celebrated as the daughter of that personage, 
and as the sister of the dragon. Indignant at the pertinacious rebellion of 
the evil principle, the universal Father despatched certain of the gods to bring 
those children to him. When they were come, he threw the serpent down to the 
bottom of the ocean. But there the monster grew so large, that he wound him. 
self round the whole globe of the earth. Death meanwhile was precipitated into 
hell, where she possesses vast apartinents, strongly built, and fenced with grates 
of iron. Her hall is grief; her table famine; hunger, her knife; delay, her ser- 
vant ; faintness, her porch; sickness and pain, her bed; and her tent, cursing 
and howling.” 


Tue Fioop or Noau.—Josephus, in his first book against Apion, states that 
Berosus the Chaldean historian relates, in a similar manner to Moses, the history 
of the flood, and the preservation of Noah in an ark or chest. In Abydemis’s 
History of Assyria, in passages quoted by Eusebius, mention is made of an ancient 
prince of the name of Sisithrus, who was forewarned by Saturn of a deluge. In 
this account, the ship, the sending forth and returning of the birds, the abating 
of the waters, and the resting of the ship on a mountain, are all mentioned. 
(Euseb. Prep. Evang. lib. 9, c. 12.—Grotius on the Christian Religion, lib. 1, 
sec. 16.) Lucian, in his book concerning the goddess of Syria, mentions the 
Syrian traditions as to this event. Here Noah is called Deucalion, and that he 
was the person intended under this name is rendered indubitable by the mention 
of the wickedness of the antediluvians, the piety of Deucalion, the ark, and the 
bringing into it of the beasts of the earth by pairs. The ancient Persian tradi. 
tions, as Dr. Hyde has shown, though mixed with fable, have a substantial 
agreement with the Mosaic account. In Hindostan, the ancient poem of 
Bhagavot treats of a flood which destroyed all mankind, except a pious prince, 
with seven of his attendants and their wives. The Chinese writers in like 
manner make mention of a universal flood. In the legonds of the ancient 
Egyptians, Goths, and Druids, striking references are made to the same event; 
(Edda, Fab. 4; Davies’s Mythology of the British Druids, p. 226,) and it was 
fouud represented in the historical paintings of the Mexicans, and among the 
American nations. The natives of Otaheite believed that the world was torn 
in pieces formerly by the anger of their gods; the inhabitants of the Sandwich 
Islands have a tradition that the Etooa, who created the world, afterward de. 
stroyed it by an inundation; and recollections of the same event are preserved 
umong the New Zealanders, as the author had the opportunity of ascertaining 


38 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. .PART 


Intely in a conversation with two of their chiefs, through an interpreter. For 
large illustrations of this point, see Bryant’s Heathen Mythology, and Faber’s 
Hore Mosaice. 

Sacririce.—The great principle of the three dispensations of religion in thu 
Scriptures,—The Patriarchal, the Mosaic, and the Christian,—that without shed. 
ding of blood there is no remission, has fixed itself in every pagan religion of 
ancient and modern times. For though the followers of Budhu are forbidden to 
offer sanguinary sacrifices to him, they offer them to demons in order to avert 
various evils; and their presentation of flowers and fruits to Budhu himself shows, 
that one part of the original rite of sacrifice has been retained, though the other, 
through a philosophic refinement, is given up. Sacrifices are, however, offered 
in China, where the most ancient form of Budhuism generally prevails; a pre. 
sumption that the Budhuism of Ceylon, and some parts of India, is a refinement 
upon a more ancient system. ‘That the practice of devoting piacular victims 
has, at one period or another, prevailed in every quarter of the globe ; and that it 
has been alike adopted by the most barbarous and by the most civilized nations, 
can scarcely be said to need regular and formal proof.” 

Expectation or A De.iverer.—Amidst the miseries of succeeding ages, tho 
ancient pagan world was always looking forward to the appearance of a great 
Deliverer and Restorer, and this expectation was so general, that it is impossible 
to account for it but from ‘the promises made unto the fathers,” beginning with 
the promise of conquest to the seed of the woman over the power of the serpent. 
It is a singular fact, and still worthy of remark, though so often stated,. that, a 
little before our Lord’s advent, an expectation of the speedy appearance of this 
Deliverer was general among the nations of antiquity. ‘The fact,” says Bishop 
Horsely, ‘‘is so notorious to all who have any knowledge of antiquity, that if any 
one would deny it, I would decline all dispute with such an adversary, as too 
ignorant to receive conviction, or too disingenuous to acknowledge what he must 
secretly admit.” It is another singular fact, that Virgil, in his Pollio, by an appli- 
cation of the Sybilline verses, which are almost literally in the high and glowing 
strains in which Isaiah prophesies of Christ, to a child of his friend, one of the 
Roman consuls, whose birth was just expected, and that out of an extravagant 
flattery, should call the attention of the world to those singular and mysterious 
books, so shortly before the birth of him who alone could fulfil the prophecies 
they contain. For a farther account of the Sybilline verses, the reader is referred 
to Prideaux’s Connection, to Bishop Lowth’s Dissertations, and to Bishop Horsley’s 
Dissertation on the Prophecies of the Messiah, dispersed among the heathen. It 
is enough here to say, that it is a historical fact, that the Sybilline books existed 
among the Romans from an early period ;—that these oracles of the Cumean 
Sybil were held in such veneration, that the book which contained them was 
deposited in a stone chest in the temple of Jupiter, in the capitol, and committed 
to the care of two persons appointed to that office expressly ;—that about a cen- 
tury before our Saviour’s birth, the book was destroyed in the fire which consumed 
the temple in which it was deposited ;—that the Roman Senate knew that similar 
oracles existed among other nations, for to repair that loss, they sent persons to 
make a new collection of these oracles, in different parts of Asia, in the islands 
of the Archipelago, in Africa, and in Sicily, who returned with about a thousand 
verses, which were deposited in the place of the originals, and kept with the same 
care ;—and that the predictions which Virgil weaves into his fourth Eclogue, of 
the appearance of a king whose monarchy was to be universal, and who was to 
bestow upon mankind the blessings he describes, were contained in them. It 
follows, therefore, that such predictions existed anciently among the Romans- 
that they were found in many other parts of Europe, and Asia, and Africa; and 


FIRST.] THEOLOGICAL INS1ITUTES. 39 


that they had so marvellous an agreement with the predictions of the Jewish 
prophets, that either they were in part copies from them, or predictions of an 
inspiration equally sacred—the fragments of very ancient prophecy interwoven 
probably with the fables of later times. ‘‘ If,” as Bishop Horsley justly observes, 
“any illiterate persons were to hear Virgil’s poem read, with the omission of a 
few allusions to the heathen mythology, ‘which would not affect the general 
sense of it, he would without hesitation pronounce it to be a prophecy of the 
Messiah.” It might seem indeed that the poet had only in many passages trans. 
lated Isaiah, did he not expressly attribute the predictions he has introduced into 
his poem to the Cumzan Sybil; which he would not have done if such passages 
had not been found in the oracles, because they were then in existence, and their 
contents were known to many. The subsequent forgeries of these oracles in the 
first ages of the Church, also, prove at least this, that the true Sybilline verses 
contained prophetic passages capable of a strong application to the true universal 
Deliverer, which those pious frauds aimed at making more particular and more 
convincing. ‘Those who do not read Latin may consult ‘the Messiah” of Pope, 
with the principal passages from Virgil in the notes, translated and collated with 
prophecies from Isaiah, which will put them in possession of the substance of this 
singular and most interesting production. 

Nor is it only on the above points that we perceive the ancient traditions and 
opinions preserved in their grand outline among different heathen nations, but also 
in the Scriptural doctrine of the destruction of the present system of material nature. 
The Pythagoreans, Platonists, Epicureans, Stoics, all had notions of a general 
conflagration. After the doctrine of the Stoics, Ovid thus speaks, Metam. lib. 1. 


‘* Esse quoque in fatis reminiscitur affore tempus 
Quo mare, quo tellus, correptaque regio cali 
Ardeat, et mundi moles operosa laboret.” 


Rememb’ring in the fates a time when fire 

Should to the battlements of heaven aspire, 

When all his blazing worlds above should burn, 

And all the’ inferior globe to cinders turn. DRryDEN. 


Seneca, speaking of the same event, ad Merciam c. ult., says, ‘‘ Tempus adte. 
niret quo sidera sideribus incurrent, g-c. The time will come. when the whole 
world will be consumed, that it may be again renewed, whén the powers of nature 
will be turned against herself, when stars will rush on stars, and the whole mate 
rial world, which now appears so resplendent with beauty and harmony, will be 
destroyed in one general conflagration. In this grand catastrophe of nature, all 
animated beings, (excepting the universal intelligence,) men, heroes, demons, and 
gods, shall perish together.” 

The same tradition presents itself in different forms in all leading systeras of 
modern paganism. 


Notre B.—Page 382. 


Or the controversy as to Zoroaster, Zeratusht, or Zertushta, and the sacred 
books said to have been written by him called Zend, or Zendavesta, which has 
divided critics so eminent, it would answer no important end to give an abstract. 
Those who wish for information on the subject are referred to Hype’s Religio 
Veterum Persarum; Pripeavx’s Connection; Warsurton’s Divine Legation; 


2 


40 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. PART 


Bryant’s Mythology; The Universal History; Sir W.Jonus’s Works, vol. ii., p. 
115; M. Du Perron, and Ricuarpson’s Dissertation prefixed to his Persian and 
Arabic Dictionary. But whatever may become of the authority of the whole or 
part of the Zendavesta, and with whatever rables the History of the Reformer of 
the Magian religion may be mixed, the learned are generally agreed that such a 
reformation took place by his instrumentality. ‘‘ Zeratusht,” says Sir W. Jones, 
‘‘ reformed the old religion by the addition of genii or angels, of new ceremonies 
in the veneration shown to fire, of a new work which he pretended to have 
received from heaven, and, above all, by establishing the actual adoration of the 
Supreme Being,” and he farther adds, ‘‘ The reformed religion of Persia continued 
in force till that country was conquered by the Musselmans; and, without study 
ing the Zend, we have ample information concerning it in the modern Persian 
writings of several who profess it. Bahman always named Zeratusht with reve- 
rence; he was in truth a pure Theist, and strongly disclaimed any adoration of 
the fire or other elements, and he denied that the doctrine of two coeval princi- 
ples, supremely good, and supremely bad, formed any part of his faith.” ‘ The 
Zeratusht of Persia, or the Zoroaster of the Greeks,” says Richardson, ‘‘ was 
highly celebrated by the most discerning people of ancient times; and his tenets, 
we are told, were most eagerly and rapidly embraced by the highest in rank, and 
the wisest men in the Persian empire.”—Dissertation prefixed to his Persian 
Dictionary. He distinguished himself by denying that good and evil, represented 
by light and darkness, were coeval, independent principles, and asserted the supre- 
macy of the true God, and exact conformity with the doctrine contained in a 
part of that celebrated prophecy of Isaiah, in which Cyrus is mentioned by name. 
‘© J am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me,” no coeval 
power. ‘J form the light, and create darkness, I make peace, or good, and cre- 
ate evil, I the Lord do all. these things.” Fire by Zerdushta appears to have 
been used emblematically only, and the ceremonies for preserving and transmit- 
ting it, introduced by him, were manifestly taken from the Jews, and the sacred 
fire of their tabernacle and temple. 


The old religion of the Persians was corrupted by Sabianism, or the worship of 
the host of heaven, with its accompanving superstition. The Magian doc- 
trine, whatever it might be at first, had degenerated, and two eternal principles, 
good and evil, had been introduced. It was therefore necessarily idolatrous 
also, and, like all other false systems, flattering to the vicious habits of the peo 
ple. So great an improvement in the moral character and influence of the religion 
of a whole nation as was effected by Zoroaster, a change which is not certainly 
paralleled in the history of the religion of mankind, can scarcely therefore be 
thought possible, except we suppose a Divine interposition, either directly, or by 
the occurrence of some very impressive events. Now, as there are so many autho. 
rities for fixing the time of Zoroaster or Zeratusht not many years subsequent to 
the death of the great Cyrus, the events to which we have referred in the text 
are those, and indeed the only ones, which will account for his success in that 
reformation of religion of which he was the author: for had not the minds of men 
been prepared for this change by something extraordinary, it is not supposable 
that they would have adopted a purer faith from him. That he gave them a 
better doctrine is clear from the admissions of even Dean Prideaux, who has 
very unjustly brinded him as an impostor. Let it then be remembered, that as 
‘the Most High ruleth in the kingdoms of men,” he often overrules great poli- 
tical events for moral purposes, The Jews were sent into captivity to Babylon 
to be reformed from their idolatrous propensities, and the’r reformation com. 
menced with their calamity. A muracle was there wrought in favour of the 


FIRST. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 4] 


three Hebrews, cuonfessors of one only God, and that under circumstances ta 
put shame upon a popular idol in the presence of the king, and ‘all the rulers 
of the provinces,” that the issue of this controversy between Jehovah and idolatry 
might be made known throughout that vast empire. Worship was refused to the 
idol by a few Hebrew captives, and the idol had no power to punish the public 
affront :—the servants of Jehovah were cast into a furnace, and he delivered 
them unhurt; and a royal decree declared “that there was no god who could 
deliver after this sort." The proud monarch himself is smitten with a singular 
disease ;—he remains subject to it until he acknowledges the true God; and, 
upon his recovery, he publicly ascribes to ui both the justice and the mercy of 
the punishment. This event takes place also in the accomplishment of a dream 
which none of the wise men of Babylon could interpret: it was interpreted by 
Daniel, who made the fulfilment to redound to the honour of the true God, by 
ascribing to him the perfection of knowing the future, which none of the false 
gods, appealed to by the Chaldean sages, possessed ; as the inability of their ser 
vants to interpret the dream sufficiently proved. After these singular events, 
Cyrus takes Babylon, and he finds there the sage and the statesman, Daniel, the 
worshipper of the God ‘who creates both good and evil,” ‘* who makes the ligh: 
and forms the darkness.’ There is moral certainty, that he and the principa 
Persians throughout the empire would have the prophecy of Isaiah respecting 
Cyrus, delivered more than a hundred years before he was born, and in which 
his name stood recorded, along with the predicted circumstances of the caption 
of Babylon, pointed out to them; as every reason, religious and political, urged 
the Jews to make the prediction a matter of notoriety : and from Cyrus’s decree 
in Ezra it is certain that he was acquainted with it, because there is in the decree 
an obvious reference to the prophecy. ‘This prophecy so strangely fulfilled woul¢ 
give mighty force to the doctrine connected with it, and which it proclaims with 
so much majesty. 


**T am Jesovan, and none else, 
Forming Licut, and creating DARKNESS, 
Making pgackg, and creating EvIL, 
I Jenovan am the author of all these things.” 


Lowth’s Translation. 


Here the great principle of corrupted Magianism was directly attacked; and 
in proportion as the fulfilment of the prophecy was felt to be singular and strik. 
ing, the doctrine blended with it would attract notice. Its force was both felt 
and acknowledged, as we have seen in the decree of Cyrus for the rebuilding of 
the temple. In that, Cyrus acknowledged the true God to be supreme, and thus 
renounced his former faith; and tlie example, the public example of a prince 
so beloved, and whose reign was so extended, could not fail to influence the 
religious opinions of his people. That the effect did not terminate in Cyrus we 
know; for from the book of Erra, it appears that both Darius and AnTAXERXES 
made decrees in favour of the Jews, in which Jehovah has the emphatic appellation 
repeatedly given to him, ‘the God of heaven ;” the very terms used by Cyrus 
himself. Nor are we to suppose the impression confined to the court; for the history 
of the three Hebrew youths; of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, sickness, and reforma- 
tion from idolatry; of the interpretation of the handwriting on the wall by 
Daniel, the servant of the living God; of his deliverance from the lions ; and the 
publicity of the prophecy of Isaiah respecting Cyrus, were too recent, too public, — 
and too striking in their nature, not to be often and largely talked of. Beside, 
n the prophecy respecting Cyrus, the intention of almighty God in recording 


42 THEOLOGICAL INSTITU'ES. [PART 


the name of that monarch in an inspired book, and showing befurehand that he 
had chosen him to overturn the Babylonian empire, is expressly mentioned as 
having respect to two great objects, First, The deliverance of Israel, and Second, 
The making known his supreme Divinixy among the nations of the earth. 1 again 
guote Lowth’s translation :— 


‘‘ For the sake of my servant Jacob 
And of Israel my chosen, 
I have even called thee by thy name, 
I have surnamed thee, though thou knewest me not. 
I am Jehovah, and none else, 
Beside me there is no God; 
I will gird thee, though thou hast not known me, 
That they may know, from the rising of the sun, 
And from the west, that there is NONE BESIDE ME ;” &c. 


It was therefore intended by this proceeding on the part of Providence, to 
teach not only Cyrus, but the people of his vast empire, and surrounding nations, 
First, That He was Jehovah, the self-subsistent, the eternal God; Seconp, That 
he was Gop atone, there being no Deity beside himself; and 'Tuirp, That good 
and evil, represented by light and darkness, were neither independent nor eternal 
subsistences ; but his great instruments and under his control. 

The Persians, who had so vastly extended their empire by the conquest of the 
countries formerly held by the monarchs of Babylon, were thus prepared for 
such a reformation of their religion as Zoroaster effected. The principles he 
advocated had been previously adopted by several of the Persian monarchs, and 
probably by many of the principal persons of that nation. Zoroaster himself 
thus became acquainted with the great truths contained in this famous prophecy, 
which attacked the very foundations of every idolatrous and Manichean system. 
From the other sacred books of the Jews, who mixed with the Persians in every 
part of the empire, he evidently learned more. This is sufficiently proved from 
the many points of similarity between his religion and Judaism, though he 
should not be allowed to speak so much in the style of the Holy Scriptures as 
some passages in the Zendavesta would indicate. He found the people however 
‘‘ prepared of the Lord” to admit his reformations, and he carried them. I can- 
not but look upon this as one instance of several merciful dispensations of God 
to the Gentile world, through his own peculiar people the Jews, by which the 
idolatries of the heathen were often checked, and the light of truth rekindled 
among them. In this view the ancient Jews evidently considered the Jewish 
Church as appointed not to preserve only but to extend true religion. ‘+ God be 
merciful to us and bless us, that thy ways may be known upon earth, thy saving 
health unto all nations.” This renders pagan nations more evidently ‘ without 
excuse.” ‘That this dispensation of mercy was afterward neglected among the 
Persians is certain. How long the effect continued we know not, nor how widely 
it spread; perhaps longer and wider than may now distinctly appear. If the 
Magi, who came from the east to see Christ, were Persians, some true worship. 
pers of God would ‘appear to have remained in Persia to that day ; and if, as is 
probable, the prophecies of Isaiah and Daniel were retained among them, they 
might be among those who * waited for redemption,” not at Jerusalem, but in a 
distant part of the world. The Parsees, who were nearly extirpated by Moham. 
medan fanaticism, were charged by their oppressors with the idolatry of fire, and 
this was probably true of the multitude. Some of their writers however warmly 


FIRST., } THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 43 


detended themselves against the charge. A considerable number of them remain 
in india to this day, and profess to have the books of Zoroaster. 

‘This note contains a considerable digression, but its connection with the argu. 
ment in the text is obvions. He who rejects the authority of the Scriptures 
will not be influenced by what has been said of the prophecies of Isaiah, or the 
events of the life of Daniel; but still it is not to be denied, that while the Persian 
empire remained, a Persian moral philosopher who taught sublime doctrines flou. 
rished, and that his opinions had great influence. The connection of the 
Jews and Persians is an undeniable matter of historic fact. The tenets ascribed 
to Zoroaster bear the marks of Jewish origin, because they are mingled with 
some of the peculiar rites and circumstances of the Jewish temple. From this 
source the theology of the Persians received improvements in correct and 
influential notions of Deity especially, and was enriched with the history and 
doctrines of the Mosaic records. The affairs of the Greeks were so interwoven 
with those of the Persians, that the sages of Greece could not be ignorant of the 
opinions of Zertushta, known to them by the name of Zoroaster, and from this 
school some of their best notions were derived. 


Norse C.—Page 35. 


Tue greatest corruptions of religion are to be traced to superstition, and to 
that vain and bewildering habit of philosophizing, which obtained among the 
ancients. Superstition was the besetting sin of the ignorant, vain speculation 
of the intelligent. Both sprung from the vicious state of the heart; the expres. 
sion was different, but the effect the same. The evil probably arose in Egypt, and 
was largely improved upon by the philosophers of Greece and India. Systems, 
hypotheses, cosmogonies, &c, are all the work of philosophy; and the most sub. 
tle and bewildering errors, such as the eternity of matter, the metempsychosis, 
the absorption of the human seul at death, &c, have sprung from them.— 
Ancient wisdom, both religious and moral, was contained in great principles, 
expressed in maxims, without affectation of systematic relation and arrangement, 
and without any deep research into'reasons and causes. The moment philoso. 
phy attempted this, the weakness and waywardness of the human mind began to 
display themselves. Theories sprung up in succession; and confusion and 
contradiction at length produced skepticism in all, and in many matured it into 
total unbelief. The speculative habit affected at once the opinions of ancient 
Africa and Asia; and in India, the philosophy of Egypt and Greece remains to 
this day, ripened into its full bearing of deleterious fruit. 

The similarity of the Greek and modern Asiatic systems is indeed a very 
curious subject ; for in the latter is exhibited at this day the philosophy of pagan. 
ism, while in other places false religion is seen only or chiefly in its simple form 
of superstition. The coincidence of the Hindoo and Greek mythology has been 
traced by Sir W. Jones; and his opinions on this subject are strongly confirmed 
by the still more striking coincidence in the doctrines of the Hindoo and Grecian 
philosoph:zal sects. ‘* The period,” says Mr. Ward, (View of the History of the 
Hinaoos, §c,) ‘when the most eminent of the Hindoo philosophers flourished, 
is still involved in much obscurity ; but the apparent agreement in many striking 
particulars between the Hindoo and the Greek systems of philosophy, not only 
suggests the idea of some union in their origin, but strongly pleads for their 
selonging to one age, notwithstanding the unfathomable antiquity claimed bv 


24 THEOLUGICAL INSTITUTES. 'PART 


the Hindoos; «and after the reader shall have compared the two systems, the 
author is persuaded he will not consider the conjecture as improbable, that Pytha- 
goras and others did really visit India, or that Goutumu and Pythagoras were 
cotemporaries, or nearly so.” (Vol. 4.) 

Many of the subjects discussed among the Hindoos were the very subjects which 
excited the disputes in the Greek academies, such as the eternity of matter, the 
first cause; God the soul of the world; the doctrine of atoms; creation; the 
nature of the gods; the doctrines of fate, transmigration, successive revolutions 
of worlds, absorption into the Divine Being,” &c. (Ibid. p. 115.) 

Mr. Ward enters at large into this coincidence in his introductory remarks toe 
his fourth volume, to which the reader is referred. It shall only be observed, 
that those speculations, and subtle arguments just mentioned, both in the Greek 
and Asiatic branches of pagan philosophy, gave birth to absolute Atheism.— 
Several of the Greek philosophic sects, as is well known, were professedly Athe- 
istic. Cudworth enumerates four forms assumed by this species of unbelief.— 
The same principles which distinguish their sects may be traced in several of 
those of the Hindoos, and above all the Atheistical system of Budhoo, branched 
uff from the vain philosophy of the Brachminical schools, and has extended farther 
than Hindooism itself. The reason of all this is truly given by Bishop Warbur- 
ton, as to the Greeks, and it is equally applicable to the Asiatic philosophy of 
the present day, which is so clearly one and the same, and also to many errors 
which have crept into the Church of Christ itself. ‘*The philosophy of the 
Greeks,” he observes, led to unbelief, ‘‘ because it was above measure refined and 
speculative, and used to be determined by metaphysical rather than by moral 
principles, and to stick to all consequences, how absurd soever, that were seen to 
arise from such principles.” 


CHAPTER VI. 


The Necessity of Revelation ;—State of Religious Knowledge among the 
Heathen. 


SEVERAL presumptive arguments have been offered in favour of the 
vpinion, that almighty God in his goodness has made an express reve- 
lation of his will to mankind. They have been drawn from the fact, 
that we are moral agents, and therefore under a law or rule of conduct 
—from the consideration that no law can be binding till made known, or 
at least rendered cognizable by those whom it is intended to govern— 
from the inability of the generality of men to collect any adequate inform. 
ation on moral and religious subjects by processes of induction—from 
the insufficiency of reason, even in the wisest, to make any satisfactory 
discovery of the first principles of religion and duty—trom the want of 
all authority and influence in such discoveries, upon the inajority of 
mankind, had a few minds of superior order and with more favourable 
opportunities been capable of making them—from the fact that no such 
discovery was ever made by the wisest of the ancient sages, inasmuch 
as the truths they held were in existence before their day, even in the 
earliest periods of the patriarchal ages—and from the fact, that whatever 


FIRST. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 4b 


truths th vy collected from early tradition, or from the descendants of 
Abrahan., mediately or immediately, they so corrupted under the pre. 
tence of improving them, (5) as to destroy their harmony and moral 
nfluence, thereby greatly weakening the probability that moral truth 
was ever an object of the steady and sincere pursuit of men. ‘To these 
presumptions in favour of an express revelation, written, preserved with 
care, and appointed to be preached and published under the authority of 
tts author, for the benefit of all, wise or unwise, we may add the power 
ful presumption which is afforded by the necessity of the case. This 
necessity of a revelation is to be collected, not only from what has been 
advanced, but from the state of moral and religious knowledge and prac- 
tice, in those countries where the records which profess to contain the 
Mosaic and the Christian revelations have been or are still unknown. 

The necessity of immediate Divine instruction was acknowledged by 
many of the wisest and most inquiring of the heathen, under the con- 
viction of the entire inability of man unassisted by God to discover truth 
with certainty,—so greatly had the primitive traditional revelations been 
obscured by errors before the times of the most ancient of those sages 
among the heathen, whose writings have in whole or in part been trans- 
mitted to us, and so little confidence had they in themselves to separate 
truth from error, or to say, “ This is true and that false.” And as the 
necessity of an express and authenticated revelation was acknowledged, 
so it was publicly exhibited, because on the very first principles of reli- 
gion and morals, there was either entire ignorance, or no settled and 
consonant opinions, even among the wisest of mankind themselves. (6) 


(5) Plato, in his Epinominis, acknowledges that the Greeks learned many 
things from the barbarians, though he asserts, that they improved what they thus 
borrowed, and made it better, especially in what related to the worship of the 
gods. (Plat. Oper. p. 703. Edit. Ficin. Lugd. 1590.) \ 

(6) Piato, beginning his discourse of the gods and the generation of the world, 
cautions his disciples ‘‘ not to expect any thing beyond a likely conjecture concern. 
ing these things.” Cicero, referring to the same subject, says, ‘Latent ista om. 
nia crassis occulta et circumfusa tenebris, all these things are involved in deep 
obscurity.” 

The following passage from the same author may be recommended to the con 
sideration of modern exalters of the power of unassisted reason. The treasures 
of the philosophy of past ages were poured at his feet, and he had studied every 
branch of human wisdom, with astonishing industry and acuteness, yet he ob 
serves, ‘Quod si tales nos natura genuisset, ut eam ipsam intueri, et perspicere, 
eademque optima duce cursum vite conficere possemus ; haud erat sane quod 
quisquani rationem, ac doctrinam requireret. Nune parvulos nobis dedit igni- 
culos, quos celeriter malis moribus, opinionibusque depravati sic restinguimus, ut 
musquam nature lumen appareat. If we had come into the world in such cir- 
cumstances, as that we could clearly and distinctly have discerned nature herself 
and have been able in the course of our lives to follow her true and uncorrupted 
directions, this alone might have been sufficient, and there would have heen 
.ittle need of teaching and instruction: but now nature has given us only some 


46 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


Some proofs of this have already been adducea ; but the importance 
of the subject requires that they should be enlarged. 

Though the belief of one Supreme Being has been found in many 
parts of the world, yet the notion of subordinate deities, the immediate 
dispensers of good and evil to men, and the objects of their fear and 
worship, has almost equally obtained ; and this of necessity destroyed or 
greatly counteracted the moral influence of that just opinion. 

“The people generally among the Gentiles,” says Dr. Tenison, “ did 
rise little higher than the objects of sense. ‘They worshipped them each 
as supreme in their kind, or no otherwise unequal than the sun, and the 
moon, or the other celestial bodies, by the adoration of which the ancient 
idolaters, as Job intimateth, denied (or excluded) the God that is above. 
Porphyry himself, one of the most plausible apologists for the religion 
of the Gentiles, doth own in some the most gross and blockish idolatry 
of mean objects. He tells us that it is not a matter of which we should 
be amazed, if most ignorant men esteemed wood and stones Divine sta- 
tues ; seeing they who are unlearned look upon monuments which have 
inscriptions upon them as ordinary stones, and regard books as so many 
bundles of paper.” (Discourse on Idolatry, p. 50.) 

The modern idolatry of Hindostan, which in principle differs nothing 
from that of the ancient world, affords a striking comment upon this 
point, and indeed is of great importance in enabling us to conceive justly 
of the true character and practical effects of idolatry in all ages. One 
Supreme Being is acknowledged by the Hindoos, but they never wor 
ship him, nor think that he concerns himself with human affairs at all. 

“The Hindoos believe in one God, so completely abstracted in his 
own essence, however, that in this state he is emphatically the unknown, 
and is consequently neither the object of hope nor of fear; he is even 
destitute of intelligence, and remains in a state of profound repose.” 
(Ward’s Hindoo Mythology, vol. ii, p. 306.) 

“This Being,” says Moore, (Hindoo Pantheon, p. 132,) “is called 
Brahm, one eternal mind, the self-existing, incomprehensible Spirit. To 
him, however, the Hindoos erect no altars. The objects of their adora- 


small sparks of right reason, which we so quickly extinguish with corrupt opin. 
ions and evil practices, that the true light of nature nowhere appears.” (Tuse. 
| Quest. 3.) 

The same author, (J'usc. Quest. 1,) having reckoned up the opinions of philo. 
scphers as to the soul’s immortality, concludes thus, ‘*‘ Harum sententiarum que 
vera est Deus aliquis viderit, que verisimillima est, magna questio est. Which 
of these opinions is true, some god must tell us; which is most like truth, 1s a 
great question.” Jamblicus, speaking of the principles of Divine worship, saith + 
‘Tt is manifest that those things are to be done which are pleasing to God; but 
what they are, it is not easy to know, except a man were taught them by God 
himself, or by some person who had received them from God, or obtained the 
knowledge of them by some Divine means.” (Jamb. in Vit. Pythag. c. 28.) 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 47 


tion commence with the triad,-Brahma, Vishnu, and Seva, which re- 
present the almighty powers of creation, preservation, and destruction.” 

The learned among the classic heathen, it is true, occasionally 
speak nobly concerning God and his attributes ; but at the same time 
they were led by their own imaginations and reasonings to conclusions, 
which neutralize the effect of their sublimer conceptions and often con- 
tradict them. The eternity of matter, for instance, was held by the 
Greek and Roman philosophers and by their preceptors in the oriental 
schools, who thought it absolutely impossible that any thing should be 
produced from nothing, thus destroying the notion of creation in its 
proper sense, and of a Supreme Creator. This opinion, as Bishop 
Stillingfleet shows, (Origines Sacra, |. iii, c. 2,) is contrary to the om- 
nipotence and independence of God, and is a great abatement of those 
correct views which the words of the ancient philosophers would seem 
sometimes to express. (7) 

It had another injurious effect ; it destroyed the interesting doctrine 
of Divine government as to those natural evils to which men are subject. 
These they traced to the unchangeable and eternal nature of matter, 
which even the Supreme God could not control. ‘Thus Seneca says, 
(De Provid. cap. 5,) “that evil things happen to good men, quia non 
potest Artifex mutare materiam, because God the Artificer could not 
change matter; and that a magno Artifice multa formantur prava, many 
things were made ill by the great Artificer ; not that he wanted art, but 
through the stubbornness of matter,” in which they generally agree. 
This opinion of theirs was brought from the oriental schools, where it 


(7) When we meet with passages in the writings of heathens which recom. 
mend moral virtues, and speak in a fit and becoming manner of God, we are apt 
from our more elevated knowledge of these subjects to attach more correct and 
precise ideas to the terms used, than the original writers themselves, and to give 
them credit for better views than they entertained. It is one proof, that though 
some of them speak, for instance, of God seeing and knowing all things, they did 
not conceive of the omniscience of God in the manner in which that attribute 
is explained by those who have learned what God is from his own words; that 
some of the pagan philosophers who lived after the Christian era, complain that 
the Christians had introduced a very troublesome and busy God, who did ‘in 
omnium mores, actus, omnium verba denique, et occultas cogitationes diligenter 
inquirere, diligently inquire into the manners, actions, words, and secret thoughts 
of all men.” Cicero, too, denies the foreknowledge of God, and for the same 
reason which has been urged against it in modern times by some who, for the 
time at least, have closed their eyes upon the testimony of the Scriptures on this 
point, and been willing, in order to serve a favourite thecry, to go back to the 
obscurity of paganism. The difficulty with him is, that presecience is inconsistent 
mith contingency. Mihi ne in Deum cadere videatur ut sciat quid casu et fortuito 
futurum sit; si enim scit, certe illud eveniet ; si certe eveniet, nulla fortuna est ; 


est autem fortuna, rerum ergo fortuitarum nulla prmsensio est. (De Fato. nm - 


12, 13.) 


48 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PARI 


had heen long received; nor was it confined to Egypt and Chaldea. 
[It was one of the dogmas which Confucius taught in China in the fifth 
century before Christ, that out of nothing that which is cannot be pro- 
duced, and that material bodies must have existed from all eternity. 
From this notion it follows, that there is no calamity to which we are 
not liable, and that God himself is unable to protect us fromit, Prayer 
is useless, and trust in him is absurd. The noble doctrine of the inflir. 
tion of misery by a wise and gracious Being for our correction and 
improvement, so often dwelt upon in Scripture, could have no place in 
a system which admitted this tenet; God could neither be “a refuge 
in trouble,” nor a Father, “ correcting us for our profit, that we might 
be partakers of his holiness.” What they knew of God was therefore, 
by such speculations, rendered entirely unprofitable. 

But a worse consequence resulted from this opinion. By some ot 
them the necessary obliquity and perverseness of matter was regarded 
not only as the source of natural, but also of moral evil; by which 
they either made sin necessary and irresistible, or found in this opinion 
much to palliate it. 

Others refer moral evil to a natural principle of evil, an evil god, 
“emulous of the good God,” which Plutarch says, (8) is a tradition of 
great antiquity, derived “from the divines ex égoA07wv and lawgivers to 
the poets and philosophers, whose first author cannot be found.” But 
whether natural and moral evil be traced to an eternal and uncontrol- 
lable matter, or to an eternal and independent anti-god, it is clear that 
the notion of a Supreme Deity, as contained in the Scriptures, and as 
conceived of by modern Theists, who have borrowed their light from 
them, could have no existence in such systems; and that by making 
moral evil necessary, men were taught to consider it as a misfortune 
rather than a crime, and were thus in fact encouraged to commit it 
by regarding it as unavoidable. 

In like manner, though occasionally we find many excellent things 
said of the providence of God, all these were weakened or destroyed by 
other opinions. ‘The Epicurean sect denied the doctrine, and laid it 
down as a maxim, “that what was blessed and immortal gave neither any 
trouble to itself nor to others ;” a notion which exactly agrees with the 
system of the modern Hindoos. “ According to the doctrine of Aris. 
totle, God resides in the celestial sphere, and observes nothing, and 
cares for nothing beyond himself. Residing in the first sphere, he pes- 
sesses neither immensity nor omnipresence ; far removed from the in. 
ferior parts of the universe, he is not even a spectator of what is pass- 
ing among its inhabitants.” (Enjfield’s History of Philosophy, lib. ii, 


(8) De Isid. et Osir.—Dr. Cudworth thinks that Plutarch has indulged iu an 
overstrainvd assertion: but the confidence with which the philosopher speaks is 
at least a proof of the great extent of this opinion. 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 49 


cap. 9.) The Stoics contended for a providence, but in their creed it 
was counteracted by the doctrine of an absolute necessity, or fate, tc 
which God and matter, or the universe, which consists, as they thought, 
of both, was immutably subject ; and where they allow it, they confine 
the care of the gods to great affairs only. 

The Platonists, and the followers of Pythagoras believed that all things 
happened xara ésiav wpovorav, according to Divine providence; but 
this they overthrew by joining fortune with God. God, fortune, and 
opportunity,” says Plato, “ govern all the affairs of men.” (De Leg. lib. 4.) 

To them also there were “ Lords many and gods many :” and wherever 
Polytheism is admitted, it is as destructive of the doctrine of providence 
as fate, though by a different process. The fatalist makes all things 
“xed and certain, and thus excludes government ; the Polytheist gives 
up the government of the world to innumerable opposing and contrary 
wills, and thus makes every thing uncertain. If the favour of one deity 
be propitiated, the wrath of another, equally or more powerful, may be 
provoked ; or the gods may quarrel among themselves. Such is the only 
providence which can be discovered in the Iliad of Homer, and the 
/Eneid of Virgil, poems which unquestionably embody the popular be- 
lief of the times in which they were written. The same confused and 
contradictory management of the affairs of men, we see in all modern 
idolatrous systems, only that with length of duration they appear to have 
become more oppressive and distracting. Where so many deities are 
essentially malignant and cruel to men; where demons are supposed to 
have power to afflict and to destroy at pleasure ; and where aspects of 
the stars, and the screams of birds, and other ominous circumstances, are 
thought to have an irresistible influence upon the fortunes of life, and the 
occurrences of every day; and especially where, to crown the whole, 
there is an utter ignorance of one supreme controlling infinite mind, or 
his existence is denied; or he who is capable of exercising such a super- 
intendence as might render him the object of hope, is supposed to be 
totally unconcerned with human affairs ; there can be no ground of firm 
trust, no settled hope, no permanent consolation. Timidity and gloom 
tenant every bosom, and in many instances render life a burden. (9) 


(9) The testimony of missionaries, who see the actual effects of paganism in the 
different countries where they labour, is particularly valuable. On the point 
mentioned in the text, the Wesleyan missionaries thus speak of the state of the 
Cingalese ——‘‘ We feel ourselves incapable of giving you a full view of the de- 
plorable state of a people, who believe that all things are governed by chance; 
who find malignant gods, or devils, in every planct, whose influence over man. 
kind they consider to be exceeding great, and the agents who inflict all the evil 
that men suffer in the world. A people so circumstanced need no addition to 
their miseries, but are objects toward which Christian pity will extend itself, as 
tar as the voice of their case can reach. They are literally, through fear of death, 
or malignant demons, all their lifetime subject to bondage.” 


Vou I. 4 


50 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. LPART 


Another great principle of religion is the doctrine of a future state 
of rewards and punishments; and though in some form it is recognized 
in pagan systems, and the traditions of the primitive ages may be traced 
in their extravagant perversions and fables; its evidence was either 
greatly diminished, or it was mixed up with notions entirely subversive 
of the moral effect which it was originally intended to produce. 

Of the ancient Chaldean philosophy, not much is known. In its best 
state it contained many of the principles of the patriarchal religion ; 
but at length, as we find from Scripture, it degenerated into the doctrine 
of judicial astrology, which is so nearly allied to fatalism, as to subvert 
the idea of the present life being a state of probation, and the future a 
state of just and gracious rewards and punishments. 

Ancient writers differ as to the opinions of the learned of Egypt ca 
the human soul. Diodorus Siculus says, they believed its immortality, 
and the future existence of the just among the gods. Herodotus 
ascribes to them the doctrine of transmigration. Both may be recon- 
ciled. The former doctrine was the most ancient, the latter was in- 
duced by that progress of error which we observe among all nations. 
Another subtle notion grew up with it, which infected the philosophy of 
Greece, and, spreading throughout Asia, has done more to destroy the 
moral effect of a belief in the future existence of man, than any other. 
This was, “ that God is the soul of the world,” from which all human 
spirits came, and to which they will return, some immediately, and 
others through long courses of transmigration. The doctrine of ancient 
revelation, of which this was a subtle and fatal perversion, is obvious. 
The Scripture account is, that the human soul was from God by creation ; 
the refinement of pagan philosophy, that it is from him by emanation, or 
separation of essence, and still remains a separate portion of God, seek- 
ing its return to him. With respect to the future, revelation always 
taught, that the souls of the just return to God at death, not to lose their 
individuality, but to be united to him in holy and delightful communion : 
the philosophic perversion was, that the parts so separated from God, 
and connected for a time with matter, would be reunited to the great 
source by refusion, as a drop of water to the ocean. (1) Thus philo- 
sophy refined upon the doctrine of immortality until it converted it 
into annihilation itself, for so it is in the most absolute sense as to 
distinct consciousness and personality. The prevalence of this notion 
under different modifications is indeed very remarkable. 


(1) “Interim tamen vix ulli fuere (que humane mentis caligo, atque imbecil- 
litas est,) qui non inciderint in errorem illum de refusione in Animam mundi. 
Nimirum, sicut existimarunt singulorum animas particulas esse anime mundane» 
quarum quelibet suo corpore, ut aqua vase, effluere, ac anime mundi, e qua 
deducta fuerit, iterum uniri.” (Gassenp1 Animadv. in Lib. 10, Diog Laertii 
p. 550.) 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 51 


Bishop Warburton proves that this opinion was held not merely bv 
the Atheistical and skeptical sects among the Greeks, but by what he 
calls the Philosophic Quaternion of dogmatic Theists, the four renowned 
schools, the PyrHacoric, the PLaronic, the PerrpaTeTic, and the 
Sroic; and on this ground argues, that though they taught the doc- 
trine of future rewards and punishments to the populace, as a means of 
securing their obedience to the laws, they themselves did not believe 
what they propagated; and in this he was doubtless correct. With 
future reward and punishment, in the proper and commonly received 
sense in all ages, this notion was entirely incompatible. He observes, 
“ And that the reader may not suspect these kind of phrases, that the 
soul is part of God, discerpted from him, of his nature, which per- 
petually occur in the writings of the ancients, to be only highly figurate 
expressions, and not to be measured by the severe standard of metaphy- 
sical propriety, he is desired to take notice of one consequence drawn 
from this principle, and universally held by antiquity, which was this, 
that the soul was eternal a parte ante, as well as a parte post, which the 
Latins well express by the word sempiternus. But when the ancients 
are said to hold the pre and post existence of the soul, and therefore to 
attribute a proper eternity to it, we must not suppose that they under. 
stood it to be eternal in its distinct and peculiar existence ; but that it 
was discerpted from the substance of God in time, and would in time be 
rejoined and resolved into it again; which they explained by a bottle’s 
being filled with sea water, that swimming there awhile, on the bottle’s 
breaking, flowed in again, and mingled with the common mass. They 
only differed about the time of this reunion and resolution, the greater 
part holding it to be at death; but the Pythagoreans not till after many 
transmigrations. The Platonists went between these two opinions, and 
rejoined pure and unpolluted souls, immediately on death, to the uni- 
versal Spirit. But those which had contracted much defilement, were 
sent into a succession of other bodies, to purge and purify them before 
they returned to their parent substance.” 

Some learned men have denied the consequence which Warburton 
wished to establish from these premises, and consider the resorption of 
these sages as figurative, and consequently compatible with distinct 
consciousness and individuality. 'The researches, however, since that 
time made into the corresponding philosophy of the Hindoos, bear this 
acute and learned man out to the full length of his conclusion. “ God, 
as separated from matter, the Hindoos contemplate as a being reposing 
in his own happiness, destitute of ideas ; as infinite placidity ; as an un- 
ruffled sea of bliss; as being perfectly abstracted and void of conscious- 
ness. They therefore deem it the height of perfection to be like this 
being. The person whose very nature, say they, is absorbed in Divine me 
ditation ; whose life is like a sweet sleep, unconscious and undisturbed 


5? - THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


who does not even desire God, and who is changed into the image of 
the ever blessed, obtains absorption into Brumhu.” ( Ward’s View of the 
Hindoos, 8vo, vol. ii, p. 177-8.) And that this doctrine of absorption 
is taken literally, is proved, not merely by the terms in which it is ex- 
nressed, though these are sufficiently unequivocal; but by its being 
»pposed by some of the followers of Vishnoo, and by a few also of their 
philosophers. Mr. Ward quotes Jumudugnee, as an exception to the 
common opinion: he says, “The idea of losing a distinct existence by 
absorption, as a drop is Jost in the ocean, is abhorrent. It is pleasant to 
feed on sweetmeats, but no one wishes to be the sweetmeat itself.” So 
satisfactorily is this point made out against the “wisdom of this world ,” 
—by it the world neither knew God nor man. | 

Another notion equally extensive and equally destructive of the original 
loctrines of the immortality of the human soul, and a state of future re- 
wards and punishments, which sprung up in the Egyptian schools, and 
was from thence transmitted into Greece, India, and throughout all Asia, 
was that of a periodical destruction and renovation of all things. “They 
conceived,” says Diodorus Siculus, “ that the universe undergoes a peri 
odical conflagration, after which all things were to be restored to their 
primitive form, to pass again through a similar succession of changes.” 
The primitive tenet, of which this was a corruption, is also evident ; and 
it affords another singular instance of the subtlety and mischief of that 
spirit of error which operated with so much activity in early times, 
that the doctrine of the destruction of the world, and the consequent ter- 
mination of the probationary state of the human race preparatory to 
the general judgment, an awful and most salutary revelation, should have 
been so wrought into philosophic theory, and so surrounded with poetic 
embellishment, as to engage the intellect, and to attract the imagination, 
only the more effectually to destroy the great moral of a doctrine which 
was not denied, and covertly to induce an entire unbelief in the eternal 
future existence of man. 

As the Stoics held that all inferior divinities and human souls were 
portions separated from the soul of the world, and would return into the 
first ce.estial fire, so they supposed, that at the same time the whole 
visible world would be consumed in one general conflagration. Then,” 
says Seneca, “after an interval the world will be entirely renewed, 
every animal will be reproduced, and a race of men free from guilt will 
repeople the earth. Degeneracy and corruption are however to creep 
in again, and the same process is to go on for ever.” (Ep. 9.) This 
too is the Brahminical notion: “The Hindoos are taught to believe 
that at the end of every Calpa (creaticn or formation) all things are 
absorbed in the Deity, and at a stated time the creative power will again 
be called into action.” (Moore’s Hindoo Pantheon.) And though the 
svstem of the Budhists denies a Creator, it holds the same species of 


¢IRST. } THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 3 


evolution. “They are of opinion that the universe is eternal, at 
east they neither know it had a beginning, or will have an end; 
hat it is homogeneous, and composed of an infinite number of similar 
worlds, each of which is a likeness of the other, and each of which is in 
a constant state of alteration,—not stationary for a moment,—at the 
instant of greatest perfection beginning to decline, and at the moment of 
greatest chaotic ruin beginning to regenerate. They compare such 
changes to a wheel in motion perpetually going round.” (Dr. Davey’s 
Account of Ceylon.) 

But other instances of darkness and error among even civilized hea- 
thens respecting the human soul, and a future state are not wanting ; for 
it is a fact which ought never to be lost sight of in these inquiries, that 
among pagans, opinions on these subjects have never been either cer- 
tain or rational; and that error once received has in no instance been 
exchanged for truth; but has gone on multiplying itself, and assuming 
an infinite variety of forms. 

The doctrine of Aristotle and the Peripatetics gives no countenance to 
the opinion of the soul’s immortality, or even of its existence after death. 
Democritus and his followers taught, thatthe soul is material and mor- 
tal; Heraclitus, that when the soul is purified from moist vapours, it 
returns into the soul of the universe ; if not, it perishes: Epicurus and 
his followers, that “when death is, we are not.” The leading men 
among the Romans, when philosophy was introduced among them, fol- 
lowed the various Greek sects. We have seen the uncertainty of 
Cicero. (2) Pliny declares, that “non magis a morte sensus ullus aut 


(2) From the philosophical works of Cicero it may be difficult to collect his 
own opinions, as he chiefly occupies himself in explaining those of others; but 
in his epistles to his friends, when, as Warburton observes, we see the man 
divested of the politician, and the sophist, he professes his disbelief of a future 
state in the frankest manner. Thus in. lib. 6, epis. 3, to Torquatus, written in 
order to console him in the unfortunate state of the affairs of their party, he 
observes: ‘‘ Sed hee consolatio levis est; illa gravior, qua te uti spero; ego certe 
utor. Nec enim dum ero, angar ulla re, cum omni vacem culpa; et si non ero, 
sensu omnino carebo. But there is another and a far higher consolation, which 
I hope is your support, as it certainly is mine. For so long as I shall preserve 
my innocence, I will never while I exist be anxiously disturbed at any event that 
may happen; and if I shall cease to exist, all sensibility must cease with me.” 

Similar expressions are found in his letters to Toranius, to Lucius Mescinius, 
and others, which those who wish to prove him a believer in the soul’s immortality 
endeavour to account for by supposing that he accommodated his sentiments to 
the principles of his friends. A singular solution, and one which scarcely can 
be seriously adopted, since in the above cited passage he so strongly expresses 
what is his own opinion, and hopes that his friend takes refuge in the same 
consolation. It may be allowed that Cicero alternated between unbelief and _ 
doubt; but never I think between doubt and certainty. The last was a voine 
0 which he never seems to have reached 


- 


04 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES [PART 


anime aut corpori quam ante natalem, the soul and body have no more 
sense after death, than before we were born.” (Nat. Hist. lib 7, cap. 
55.) Cesar, “that beyond death there is neque cure neque gaudio 
locum, neither place for care or joy.” (Sallust. De Bello Catil. sec. 5.) 
Seneca in his 102d epistle speaks of a Divine part within ns, which joins 
us to the gods; and tells Lucilius, “that the day which he fears as his 
last aterni natalis est, is the birth-day of eternity ;” but then he says, 
“he was willing to hope it might be so, on the account of some great men, 
“em gratissimam promittentium magis quam probantium, who promised 
what they could not prove ;” and on other occasions he speaks out 
plainly, and says that death makes us incapabable of good or evil. The 
poets, it is true, spoke of a future state of rewards and punishments ; 
they had the joys of Elysium and the tortures of Tartarus; but both 
philosophers and poets regarded them as vulgar fables. Virgil does not 
hide this, and numerous quotations of the same import might be given 
both from him and others of their poets. 


“Felix qui potuit rerum cogposcere causas ; 
Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum 
Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari!”’—Georg. 2, 1. 490, &c 


Happy the man, whose vigorous soul can pierce 

Through the formation of this universe, 

Who nobly dares despise, with soul sedate, 

The din of Acheron, and vulgar fears and fate-—WarrTon. 


Nor was the skepticism and unbelief of the wise and great long kept 
from the vulgar, among whom they wished to maintain the old super- 
stitions as instruments by which they might be controlled. Cicero com. 
plains, that the common people in his day mostly followed the doctrine 
of Epicurus. 

Since then these erroneous and mischievous views concerning God, 
providence, and a future state, or the total denial of all of them, are 
found to have resulted from the rejection or loss of the primitive tradi- 
tions; and farther as it is clear that such errors are totally subversive of 
the fundamental principles of morals and religion, and afford inducement 
to the commission of every species of crime without remorse, or fear of 
punishment ; the necessity of a republication of these great doctrines in 
an explicit and authentic manner, and of institutions for teaching and 
. enforcing them upon all ranks of men, is evident ; and whatever proof 
may be adduced for the authentication of the Christian revelation, it can 
never be pretended, that a revelation to restore these great principles was 
not called for by the actual condition of man; and, in proportion to the 
necessity of the case, is the strength of the presumption that one haa 
been mercifully afforded. 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 55 


CHAPTER VII. _ 
The Necessity of Revelation :—State of Morals among the Heathen. 


Ir the necessity of a revelation may be argued from the confused, 
contradictory, and false notions of heathen nations as to the principal 
doctrines of religion; no less forcibly may the argument be pursued 
from the state of their morals both in knowledge and in practice. 

This argument is simple and obvious. If the nature, extent, and 
obligation of moral rules had become involved in great misapprehen. 
sion and obscurity ; if what they knew of right and wrong wanted an 
enforcement and an authority which it could not receive from their 
respective systems; and if, for want of efficient, counteracting reli- 
gious principles, the general practice had become irretrievably vicious; 
a direct interposition of the Divine Being was required for the repub- 
lication of moral rules and for their stronger enforcement. 

The notions of all civilized heathens on moral subjects, like their 
knowledge of the first principles of religion, mingled as they were with 
their superstitions, prove that both were derived from a common source. 
There was a substantial agreement among them in many questions of 
right and wrong ; but the boundaries which they themselves acknow- 
ledged were not kept up, and the rule was gradually lowered to the 
practice, though not in all cases so as entirely to efface the original 
communication. 

This is an important consideration, inasmuch as it indicates the 
transmission of both religion and morals from the patriarchal system, 
and that both the primitive doctrines and their corresponding morals 
received early sanctions, the force of which was felt through succeed- 
ing ages. It shows too, that even the heathen have always been 
under a moral government. The laws of God have never been quite 
obliterated, though their practice has ever been below their knowledge, 
aud though the law itself was greatly and wilfully corrupted through 
the influence of their vicious inclinations. 

This subject may perhaps be best illustrated by adverting to some 
of the precepts of the Second Table, which embodied the morals of 
the patriarcha] ages, under a new sanction. Of the obligation of these, 
all heathen nations have been sensible; and yet, in all, the rule was 
perverted in theory and violated in practice. 

Mourper has, in all ages and among all civilized and most savage 
heathen nations also, been regarded as an atrocious crime; and yet 
the rule was so far accommodated to the violent and ferocious habits 
of men, as to fill every heathen land with blood guiltiness. The slight 
regard paid to the life of man, in all heathen countries, cannot have 


56 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


escaped the notice of reflecting minds. They knew she rule; but the 
act, under its grosser and more deliberate forms only, was thought to 
violate it. Among the Romans, men were murdered in their very pas- 
times, by being made to fight with wild beasts and with each other, 
and though this was sometimes condemned, as a “ spectaculum crudele 
et inhumanum,” yet the passion for blood increased, and no war ever 
caused so great a slaughter as did the gladiatorial ccmbats. They 
were at first confined to the funerals of great persons. The first show 
of this kind exhibited in Rome by the Bruti, on the death of their fa- 
ther, consisted of three couples, but afterward the number greatly in- 
creased. Julius Cesar presented 300 pairs of gladiators ; and the Em- 
peror Trajan, 10,000 of them, for the entertainment of the people.— 
Sometimes these horrid exhibitions, in which, as Seneca says, “ Homo, 
sacra res, homo jam per lusum et jocum occiditur,” when the practice 
had attained its height, deprived Europe of 20,000 lives in one month.(3) 

This is farther illustrated by the treatment of slaves, which composed 
so large a portion of the population of ancient states. (4) They knew 
and acknowledged the evil of murder, and had laws for its punishment ; 
but to this despised class of human beings they did not extend the rule ; 
nor was killing them accounted murder, any more than the killing of a 
beast. ‘The master had absolute power of life, or death, or torture , 
and their lives were therefore sacrificed in the most wanton manner. (5) 

By various sophistries, suggested by their vices, their selfishness, and 
their cruelty, the destruction of children also, under certain circum- 
stances, ceased to be regarded as a crime. In many heathen nations it 
was allowed to destroy the foetus in the womb; to strangle, or drown, 


(3) Though Cicero, Seneca, and others, condemned these barbarities, it was in 
s? incidental and indifferent a manner as to produce no effect. They were abo. 
lished soon after the establishment of Christianity, and this affords an illustration 
of the admission of Rousseau himself. ‘* La philosophie ne peut faire aucun bien, 
que la Religion ne le fasse encore mieux : et la Religion en fait beaucoup que la 
philosophie ne sauroit faire.” 


(4) In the 110th Olympiad, there were at Athens only 21,000 citizens and 
40,000 slaves. It was common for a private citizen of Rome to have 10 or 20,000. 
(Tayior’s Civil Law.) 

(5) The youth of Sparta made it their pastime frequently to lie in ambush by 
night for the slaves, and sally out with daggers upon every Helot who came near 
them, and murder him in cold blood. The Epsort, as soon as they entered upon 
their office, declared war against them in form, that there might be an appear 
ance of destroying them legally. It was the custom for Vedius Pollio, when his 
slaves had committed a fault, sometimes a very trifling one, to order them to be 
thrown into his fisl-ponds, to feed his lampreys. It was the constant custom, as 
we learn from Tacitus, Annal. xiv, 43, when a master was murdered in his own 
house, to put all the slaves to death indiscriminately. For a just and affecting 
account of the condition of slaves in ancient states, see Porreus’s Beneficial Ef 
fects of Christianity. 


FIRST.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 57 


or expose infants, especially if sickly or deformed ; and that which 
“‘n Christian states, is considered as the most atrocious of crimes, was, 
oy the most celebrated of ancient pagan nations, esteemed a wise and 
political expedient to rid the state of useless or troublesome members, 
and was even enjoined by some of their most celebrated sages and le- 
gislators. ‘The same practice continues to this day in a most affect- 
ing extent, not only among uncivilized pagans, but among the Hin- 
d3os and the Chinese. 

This practice of perverting and narrowing the extent of the holy 
1aw of God, which had been transmitted to them, was exemplified also 
in the allowing, or rather commending the practice of suicide. 

Doubtless, the primitive law against murder condemned also HATRED 
and REVENGE. Our Lord restored it to its true meaning among the 
Jews; and that it was so understood even among the ancient heathens, 
is clear from a placable and forgiving spirit being sometimes praised, 
and the contrary censured by their sages, moralists, and poets. Yet 
not only was the rule violated almost universally in practice ; but it was 
also disputed and denied in many of its applications by the authority of 
their wise and learned men; so that, as far as the authority of moral 
teachers went, a full scope was given for the indulgence of hatred, 
malice, and insatiate revenge. One of the qualities of the good man 
described by Cicero is, that he hurts no one, except he be injured 
himself. “Qui nemini nocet, nisi lacessitus injuria ;” and he declares 
as to himself, “sic ulciscar facinora singula quemadmodum a quibusque 
sum provocatus: I will revenge all injuries, according as I am provoked 
by any ;” and Aristotle speaks of meekness as a defect, because the 
meek man will not avenge himself, and of revenge, as “ avdpwaixorepov 
paddov, a more manly thing.” (Moral. |. 4, c. 11.) 

«Thou shalt not commit ADULTERY,” was another great branch of 
the patriarchal law, existing before the Decalogue, as appears from 
the sacred history. It forbids uncleanness of every kind, in thought 
and deed, and specially guards the sanctity of marriage: nor is there 
any precept more essential to public morals, and to the whole train 
of personal, social, domestic, and national virtues. 

It is not necessary to bring detailed proof of the almost universal 
gross, and habitual violation of this sacred law in all pagan nations, 
both ancient and modern, from its first stages down to crimes wapa 
guvdiv. This is sufficiently notorious to all acquainted with the history 
of the ancient and modern pagan world ; and will not be denied by 
any. It is only requisite to show that they had the law, and that it was 
weakened and corrupted, so as to render a republication necessary. 

The public laws against adultery in almost all heathen states, and the 
censures of moralists and satirists, are sufficiently in proof that sucha 
aw was known ; and the higher the antiquity of the times, the more 


. 68 THEOLOGICAL {(NSTITUTES. [PART 


respect we see paid to chastity, and the better was the practice. Nor 
was the act only considered by some of their moralists as sinful; but 
the thought and desire, as may be observed in passages both in Greek 
and Roman writers. But as to this vice, too, as well as others, the prac- 
tice lowered the rule; and the authority of one lawgiver and moralist 
being neutralized by another, license was given to unbounded offence. 

Divorce, formerly permitted only in cases of adultery, became at 
length a mere matter of caprice, and that both with Jews and Cen- 
tiles: and among the latter, adultery was chiefly interpreted as the vio- 
lation of the marriage covenant by the wife only, or by the man with 
a married woman, thus leaving the husband a large license of vicious 
indulgence. ‘To whoredom and similar vices, lawgivers, statesmen, 
philosophers, and moralists gave the sanction of their opinions and 
their practice; which foul blot of ancient heathenism continues to 
this day, to mark the morals of pagan countries. (6) 

In most civilized states the very existence of society, and the natu- 
ral selfishness of man, led to the preservation of the ancient laws 
against THEFT and RAPINE, and to the due execution of the statutes 
made against them; but in this also we see the same disposition to 
corrupt the original prohibition. It was not extended tc strangers or 
to foreign countries; nor was it generally interpreted to reach to any 
thing more than flagrant acts of violence. Usury, extortion, and fraud 
were rather regarded as laudatory acts, than as injurious to character ; 
and so they continue to be esteemed wherever Christianity has not is- 
sued her authoritative laws against injustice in all its degrees. Through. 
out India, there is said to be scarcely such a thing as common honesty. 

Another great branch of morality is rrutH; but on the obvious 
obligation to speak it, we find the same laxity both of opinion and 
practice ; and in this, heathenism presents a striking contrast to Chris 
tianity, which commands us “to speak the truth one to another,” and 
denounces damnation against him that “loves or makes a lie.” 


(6) Terence says of simple fornication, ‘‘ Non est scelus, adolescentulum scor- 
tari flagitium est.” The Spartans, through a principle in the institutions of 
Lycurgus, which controlled their ancient opinions on this subject, in certain pre- 
scribed cases, allowed adultery in the wife; and Plutarch, in his Life of Lycurgus, 
mentioning these laws, commends them as being made * pvotxws kat moder ixws,ac- 
cording to natnre ana pplity.” Callicratides, the Pythagorean, tells the wife that 
she must bear with her husband’s irregularities, since the law allows this to the 
man and not to the woman. Plutarch speaks to the same purpose in several 
places of his writings. On the other hand, some of the philosophers condemned 
adultery ; and in many places, it was punished in the woman with death, in the 
man with infamy. Still, however, the same vacillation of judgment, and the same 
limitations, of what they sometimes confess to be the ancient rule and custom, 
may be observed throughout; but as far as the authority of philosophers went “t 
was chiefly on the side of vicious p1actice. 


° 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 598 


They knew that “tollendum est ex rebus contrahendis omne mendacium, 
‘Cic. de Off. \. iii, n. 81,) no lie was to be used in contracts ;” and that 
an honest man should do and speak nothing in falsehood and with 
hypocrisy ; but they more frequently departed from this rule than en- 
joined it. The rule of Menander was, “a lie is better than a hurtful 
truth.” Plato says, “he may lie who knows how to do it in a fit sea- 
son ;” and Maximus Tyrius, “that there is nothing decorous in truth, 
but wnen it is profitable ;” and both Plato and the Stoics frame a jesu- 
itical distinction between lying with the lips and in the mind. Deceit 
and falsehood have been therefore the character of all pagan nations, 
and continue so to be to this day. This is the character of the Chinese, 
as given by the best authorities; and of the Hindoos it is stated by the 
most respectable Europeans, not merely missionaries, but by those who 
have long held official, civil, and judicial situations among them, that 
their disregard of truth is uniform and systematic. When discovered, 
it causes no surprise in the one party, or humiliation in the other. 
Even when they have truth to tell, they seldom fail to bolster it up 
with some appended falsehoods. (7) 

Nor can the force of the argument in favour of the necessity of a 
direct revelation of the will of God by these facts be weakened by alleg- 
ing, what is unhappily too true, that where the Christian revelation has 
been known, great violations of all these rules have been commonly ob- 
served ; for, not to urge the moral superiority of the worst of Christian 
states, in all of them the authority and sanction of religion is directed 
against vice; while among heathens, their religion itself, having been 
corrupted by the wickedness of man, has become the great instrument 
of encouraging every species of wickedness. This circumstance so 
fully demonstrates the necessity of an interposition on the part of God 
to restore truth to the world, that it deserves a particular consideration 


CHAPTER VIII. 
The Necessity of Revelation :—Religions of the Heathen. 


Tuar the religions which have prevailed among pagan nations have 
been destructive of morality, ¢annot be denied. 


(7) ‘*It is the business of all,” says Sir John Shore, “from the Ryot to the 
Dewan, to conceal and deceive. The simplest matters of fact are designedly 
covered with a veil, which no human understanding can penetrate.” The preva 
lence of perjury is so universal, as to involve the judges in extreme perplexity 
“The honest men,” says Mr. Strachey, ‘as well as the rogues, are perjured 
Even where the real facts are sufficient to convict the offender, the witnesses _ 
against him must add others, often notoriously false, or utterly incredible, such 
as in Europe would wholly invalidate their testimony.” 


. 


60 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


How far the speculative principles which they embodied had this effect, 
has already been shown; we proceed to their more direct influence. 


The gloomy superstition, which pervaded most of them, fostered 
ferocious and cruel dispositions. 


The horrible practice of offering human sacrifices prevailed throughout 
every region of the heathen world, to a degree which is almost incredi. 
ble ; and it still prevails in many populous countries where Christianity 
has not yet been made known. ‘There are incontestable proofs of its 
having subsisted among the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Persians, the 
Phenicians, and all the various nations of the east. It was one of the 
crying sins of the Canaanites. The contagion spread over every part 
of Asia, Africa, and Europe. The Greeks and Romans, though less 
involved in this guilt than many other nations, were not altogether un- 
tainted with it. On great and extraordinary occasions, they had recourse 
to what was esteemed the most efficacious and most meritorious sacrifice 
that could be offered to the gods, the effusion of human blood. (8) But 
among more barbarous nations, this practice took a firmer root. The 
Scythians and ‘Thracians, the Gauls and the Germans, were strongly 
addicted to it; and our own island, under the gloomy and ferocious 
despotism of the Druids, was polluted with the religious murder of its 
inhabitants. In the semi-civilized kingdoms on the western side of 
Africa, as Dahomy, Ashantee, and others, many thousands fall every 
year victims to superstition. In America, Montezuma offered 20,000 
victims yearly to the sun; and modern navigators have found the practice 
throughout the whole extent of the vast Pacific ocean. As for India, 
the cries of its abominable and cruel superstitions have been sounded 
repeatedly in the ears of the British public and its legislature; and, 
including infants and widows, not fewer than 10,000 lives fall a saeri- 
fice to idolatry in our eastern dominions yearly ! (9) 

The influence of these practices in obdurating the heart, and disposing 
it to habitual cruelty, need not be pointed out; but the religions of 
paganism have been as productive of impurity as of blood. 

The Floralia among the Romans were celebrated for four days 
1ogether by the most shameless actions; and their mysteries in every 
country, whatever might be their original intent, became horribly corrupt. 
It was in the temples of many of their deities, and on their religious 
festivals, that every kind of impurity was most practised ; and this con- 


(8) Plutarch in the Lives of Themistocles, Marcellus, and Aristides. (Livy 1. 
22,¢.57; Florus 1.1, c.13; Virg. Ain. x, 518, xi, 81.) 


(9) See Maurice’s Indian Antiquities ; the writings of Dr. Claudius Buchanan ; 
Ward on the Hindoos ; Dubois on Hindoo Manners, &c; Robertson’s History of 
America; Bowditch’s Account of Ashantee; Moore’s Hindoo Pantheon; and 
Porteus and Ryan on the Effects of Christianity. 


o 


FIRST. } THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 63 


tinues to the present day throughout all the regions of modern 
paganism. (1) 

This immoral tendency of their religion was confirmed and perfecte} 
by the very character and actions of their gods, whose names were 
perpetually in their mouths ; and whose murderous or obscene exploits, 
whose villanies and chicaneries, whose hatreds and strifes, were the 
subject of their popular legends ; which made up in fact the only theo: 
logy, if so it may be called, of the body of the people. That they ould 
be better than their gods, was not to be expected, and worse they could 
not be. Deities with such attributes could not but corrupt, and be ap- 
pealed to, not merely to excuse, but to sanctify the worst practices. (2) 

Let this argument then be summed up. 

All the leading doctrines on which religion rests, had either been 
corrupted by a grovelling and immoral superstition, among heathen 
nations ; or the philosophic speculations of their wisest men had intro- 
duced principles destructive of man’s accountability and present and 
future hope. On morals themselves, the original rules were generally 
perverted, limited, or rejected ; while the religious rites, and the legend- 
ary character of the deities worshipped, to the exclusion of the true God, 
gave direct incitement and encouragement to vice. Thus the grossest 
ignorance on Divine subjects universally prevailed ; the learned were 
involved in inextricable perplexities; and the unlearned received as 
truth the most absurd and monstrous fables, all of them, however, 
favourable to vicious indulgence. ‘The actual state of morals also ac. 
corded with the corrupt religious systems, and the lax moral principles 
which they adopted; so that in every heathen state of ancient times, 
the description of the Apostle Paul in the first chapter of Romans is 
supported by the evidence of their own historians and poets. The 
same may also be affirmed of modern pagan countries, whose moral 
condition may explain more fully, as they are now so well known 
through our intercourse with them, the genius and moral tendency of 
the ancient idolatries, with which those of India, and other parts of the 
east especially, so exactly agree. 

These are the facts. They affect not a small portion of mankind, 
but all who have not had the oenefits of the doctrines and morals of the 
Holy Scriptures. There are no exceptions from this of any consequence 


(1) See Leland and Whitby, on the Necessity of a Revelation ; and the writers 
or the customs of India,—Ward, Dubois, Buchanan, and Moore, before re 
ferred to. 

(2) Hence Cherea, in Terence, pertinently enough asks, Quod fecit is qut tem- 
pla celi summa sonitu concutit, ego homuncio non facerem? Eunuch. Act. 3, 
sec. 5. He only imitated Jupiter. Aud says Sextus Empyricus, ‘‘ That cannot 
pe unjust which is done by the god Mercury, the prince of thieves, for how can 
a god be wicked?” (Apud. Euseb. Prep. lib. 6, cap. 10.) 


* 


62 ) THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. {PART 


to the argument, though some difference in the morals of heathen states 
may be allowed. Where the Scriptures are unknown, there is not, nor 
ever has been since the corruption of the primitive religion, a religious 
system which has contained just views of God and religious truth, the 
Theists of the present day being judges ;—none which has enjoined a 
correct morality, or even opposed any effectual barrier against the de. 
terioration of public manners, These facts cannot be denied: for the 
allegations formerly made of the morality of modern pagan nations 
have been sufficiently refuted by a better acquaintance with them ; 
and the conclusion is irresistible, that an express revelation of the will 
of God, accompanied with efficient corrective institutions, was become 
necessary, and is still demanded by the ignorance and vices, the mise- 
ries and disorders of every part of the earth into which Christianity 
has not been introduced. 

But we may go another step. This exhibition of the moral condition 
of those nations who have not had the benefit of the renewal and repub- 
lication of the truths of the patriarchal religion, not only supports the 
conclusion that new and direct revelations from God were necessary ; 
but the wants, which that condition so obviously created, will support 
other presumptions as to the nature and mode of that revelation, in the 
case of such a gift being bestowed in the exercise of the Divine mercy, 
for if there is ground to presume that almighty God, in his compas. 
sion for his creatures, would not leave them to the unchecked influence 
of error and vice ; nor, upon the corruption of that simple, but compre- 
hensive doctrine, worship and morals, communicated to the progenitors 
of all those great branches of the family of man which have been 
spread over the earth, refuse to interpose to renew and to perfect that 
religious system which existed.in an elementary form in the earliest 
ages, and give to it a form less liable to alteration and decay than 
when left to be transmitted by tradition alone; there is equal ground 
to presume, that the revelation, whenever vouchsafed, should be of that 
nature, and accompanied by such circumstances, as would most effec- 
tually accomplish this benevolent purpose. 

Presumptions as to the manner in which such a revelation would be 
made most effectually to accomplish its ends, are indeed to be guarded, 
lest we shuuld set up ourselves as adequate judges in a case which 
involves large views and extensive bearings of the Divine government 
But without violating this rule, it may, from the obviousness of the case, 
be presumed, that such a supernatural manifestation of truth should, 
1, contain explicit information on those important subjects on which 
mankind had most greatly and most fatally erred. 2. That it should 
accord with the principles of former revelations, given to men in the 
same state of guilt and moral incapacity as we find them in the present 
day. 3. That it should have a satisfactory external authenticution 


e 


VIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 63 


4. That it should contain provisions for its effectual promulgation 
among all classes of men. All this, allowing the necessity and the pro 
bability of a supernatural communication of the will of God, must cer 
tainly be expected ; and if the Christian revelation bears this character 
.t has certainly these presumptions in its favour, that it meets an ob 
vious case of necessity, and confers the advantages just enumerated. 

1. It gives information on those subjects which are most important 
to man, and which the world had darkened with the greatest errors— 
the nature and perfections, claims and relations of God—his wi. (3) 
as the rue of moral good and evil—the means of obtaining paRDON and 
of conquering vice—the true Mep1aror between God and man—Divine 
Provipence—the cu1EF Goop of man, respecting which alone more than 
three hundred different opinions among the ancient sages have been reck- 
oned up—man’s IMMORTALITY and accountability, and a FUTURE STATE 

2. It is also required that a revelation should accord with the prin 
ciples of former revelations, should any have been given. 

For since it is a first principle that God cannot err himself, nor de- 
ceive us, so far as one revelation renews or explains any truth in a 
preceding one, it must agree with the previous communication; and 
in what it adds to a preceding revelation, it cannot contradict any 
thing which it contains, if it be exhibited as a truth of unchangeable 
character or a duty of perpetual obligation. 

Now whatever direct proof may be adduced in favour of the Divine 
authority of the Jewish and Christian revelations, this at least may be 
confidently urged as evidence in their favour, that they have a substan. 
tial agreement and harmony among themselves, and with that ancient 
traditional system which existed in the earliest ages, and the fragments 
of which we find scattered among all nations. As to the patriarchal 
system of religion, to which reference has been so often made, beside 
the notices of it which are every where scattered in the book of Gene- 
sis, we have ample and most satisfactory information in the ancient 
book of Job, of which sufficient evidence may be given that it was 
written not later than the time of Moses; and that Job himself lived 
between the flood of Noah and the call of Abraham. Of the religion 
of the patriarchs, as it existed just at that period when Sabianism, or 
the worship of the heavenly luminaries, began to make its appearance, 
and was restrained by the authority of the “judges,” who were the 
heads of tribes or families, and as it existed in the preceding ages, as 
we find from the reference made by Job and his friends to the authority 
of their “ fathers,” this book contains an ample and most satisfactory 
record; and from this venerable relic a very copious body of doctrinal] 
and practical theology might be collected ; but the following particulars 
will be sufficient for the present argument :— | , 


(3) See note A at the end of the chapter. 


¢ 


64 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES [PART 


One Supreme Being alone is recognized throughout, as the object of 
adoration, worship, hope, trust, and fear; who is represented as of 
infinite and unsearchable majesty,—eternal, omnipresent, omniscient, 
almighty, and of perfect wisdom, justice, goodness ; governing all things, 
noting and judging individuals, regarding the good, punishing the wicked, 
placable, listening to the prayers of the penitent. The natural corruption 
of man’s nature is also stated ; and his own inability to cleanse his heart 
from sin. Man, we are told, cannot be just with God, and therefore 
needs an intercessor. Sacrifices, as of Divine appointment, and propi- 
tiatory in their nature, are also adverted to as commonly practised. 
Express reference is made to a Divine Redeemer and his future incar- 
nation, as an object of hope. The doctrines of an immortal spirit in 
man, and of the resurrection of the body, and a future judgment, have 
all a place in this system. Creation is ascribed to God; and not only 
the general doctrine of Providence, but that most interesting branch of 
it, the connection of dispensations of prosperity and affliction with mo- 
ral ends. Murder, theft, oppression, injustice, adultery, intemperance, 
are all pointed out as violations of the laws of God; and also wrath, 
envy, and other evil passions. Purity of heart, kindness, compassion to 
the poor, &c, are spoken of as virtues of the highest obligation ; and the 
fear and love of God are enjoined, with a calm and cheerful submission 
to his will, in humble trust that the darkness of present events will be 
ultimately cleared up, and shown to be consistent with the wisdom, 
justice, holiness, and truth of God. The same points of doctrine and 
morals may also be collected from the book of Genesis. 

Such was the comprehensive system of patriarchal theology; and it 
is not necessary to stop, to point out, that these great principles are all 
recognized and taken up in the successive revelations by Moses and by 
Christ,—exhibiting three religious systems, varying greatly in circum. 
stances; introduced at widely distant periods, and by agents greatly 
differing in their condition and circumstances ; but exactly harmonizing 
un every leading doctrinal tenet, and agreeing in their great moral impres. 
sion upon mankind—PERFECT PURITY OF HEART AND CONDUCT. 

3. That it should be accompanied with an explicit and impressive 
external authentication, of such a nature as to make its truth obvious 
to the mass of mankind, and to leave no reasonable doubt of its Di. 
vine authority. 

The reason of this is evident. A mere impression of truth on the 
understanding could not by itself be distinguished from a discovery made 
by the human intellect, and could have no authority, as a declaration of 
the will of a superior, with the person receiving it; and as to others. it . 
could only pass for the opinion of the individual who might promulge it. 
(Vide chap. 3.) Anauthentication of a system of truth, which professes 
to be the will, the law, of him who, having made, has the right to com 


% 


FIRST.} THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 695 


mand us, external to the matter of the doctrine itself, is therefore ne. 
cessary to give it authority, and to create the obligation of obedience. 
This accords with the opinion of all nations up to the earliest ages, 
and was so deeply wrought in the common sense of mankind, that all 
the heathen legislators of antiquity affected a Divine commission, and 
all false religions have leaned for support upon pretended supernature| 
sanctions. ‘The proofs of this are so numerous and well known, that 
it is unnecessary to adduce them. 

The authority of the ancient patriarchal religion rested on proor 
external to itself. We do not now examine the truth of its alleged 
authentications,—they were admitted ; and the force of the revelation 
depended upon them in the judgment of mankind. We have a most 
ancient book, which records the opinions of the ante-Mosaic ages. 
The theology of those ages has been stated ; and from the history con- 
tained in that book we learn, that the received opinion was, that the 
almighty Lawgiver himself conversed with our first parents and with 
the patriarchs, under celestial appearances ; and that his mercies to 
men, or his judgments, failed not to follow ordinarily the observance 
or violation of the laws thus delivered, which was in fact an authenti- 
cation of them renewed from time to time. The course of nature, dis- 
playing the eternal power and Godhead, as well as the visitations of 
Providence, was to them a constant confirmation of several of the 
leading truths in the theology they had received ; and by the deep im. 
press of Divinity which this system received in the earliest ages from 
the attestations of singular judgments, and especially the flood, it is 
only rationally to be accounted for, that it was universally transmit- 
ted, and waged so long a war against religious corruptions. 

But notwithstanding the authentication of the primitive religion, as 
a matter of Divine revelation, and the effects produced by it in the world 
for many ages; and indeed still produced by it in its very broken and 
corrupted state, in condemning many sinful actions, so as to render 
the crimes of heathens without excuse ; that system was traditional, 
and liable to be altered by transmission. In proportion also as histo. 
rical events were confounded by the lapse of time, and as the migra. 
tions and political convulsions of nations gave rise to fabulous stories, 
the external authenticating evidence became weak, and thus a merci- 
ful interposition on the part of God was, as we have seen, rendered 
necessary by the general igno,ance of mankind. Indeed the primitive 
revelations supposed future ones, and were not in themselves regarded 
as complete. Butif a republication only of the truth had been neces- 
sary, the old external evidence was so greatly weakened by the lapse 
of ages, which as to most nations had broken the line of historical 
testimony on which it so greatly rested, that it required a new authen. 
lication, in a form adapted to the circumstances of the world; and if 


Vout. I. 


66 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. ‘PART 


an enlarged revelation were vouchsafed, every addition to the declared 
will of God needed an authentication of the same kind as at first. 

If we presume, therefore, that a new revelation was necessary, we 
must presume, that, when given, it would have an external authentica- 
tion as coming from God, from which there could he no reasonable 
appeal ; and we therefore conclude, that as the Mosaic and Christian 
revelations profess both to republish and to enlarge former revelations, 
the circumstance of their resting their claims on the external evidence 
of miracles and prophecy, is a presumption in their favour. Whether 
the evidence which they offer be decisive or not, is a future question ; 
but in exhibiting such evidence, they accord with the reason of the 
thing, and with the common sense of all ages. 

4. It is farther presumed, that, should a revelation of religious truth 
and the will of God be made, it would provide means for its effectual 
communication to all classes of men. 

As the revelation supposed must be designed to restore and enlarge 
the communications of truth, and as, from the increase and dispersion 
of the human race, tradition had become an imperfect medium of con. 
veying it, it is a fair presumption, that the persons through whom the 
communication was made should record it in writrne. A revelation 
to every individual could not maintain the force of its original authen. 
tication ; because as its attestation must be of a supernatural kind, its 
constant recurrence would divest it of that character, or weaken its 
force by bringing it among common and ordinary events. A revela- 
tion on the contrary to few, properly and publicly attested by super- 
natural occurrences, needed not repetition ; but the most natural and 
effectual mode of preserving the communication, once made, would be 
to transmit it by writing. Any corruption of the record would be 
rendered impracticable by its being publicly taught in the first instance; 
by a standard copy being preserved with care; or by such a number 
of copies being dispersed as to defy material alteration. This pre. 
sumption is realized also in the Jewish and Christian revelations ; as 
will be seen when the subject of the authority of the Holy Scriptures 
comes to be discussed. ‘They were first publicly taught, then com- 
mitted to writing, and the copies were multiplied. 

Another method of preserving and diffusing the knowledge of a re- 
velation once made, would be, the institution of public commemorative 
rites, at once preserving the memory c: the fact, and of the doctrine 
connected with it, among great bodies of people, and leading them to 
euch periodical inquiries as might preserve both with the greatest ac- 
curacy. ‘These also we find in the institutions of Moses, and of Christ ; 
and their weight in the argument for the truth of the mission of each, 
will be adduced in its proper place. 

Allowing it to be reasonable to presume, that a revelation would be 


FIRST. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 67 


~ouchsafed ; it is equally so to presume, that it should contain some 
injunctions favourable to its propagation among men of all ranks. For 
as the compassion of God to the moral necessities of his creatures, 
generally, is the ground on which so great a favour rests, we cannot 
suppose that one class of men should be allowed to make a monopoly 
of this advantage; and this would be a great temptation to them to 
publish their own favourite or interested opinions under a pretended 
Divine sanction, and tend to counteract the very purpose for which a 
revelation was given. Such a monopoly was claimed by the priests 
of ancient pagan nations; and that fatal effect followed. It was 
claimed for a time by a branch of the Christian priesthood, contrary 
to the obligations of the institution itself; and the consequences were 
similar. Among the heathens, the effect of this species of monopoly 
was, that those who encouraged superstition and ignorance among the 
people, speedily themselves lost the truth, which, through a wicked 
policy, they concealed ; and the case might have been the same in 
Christendom, but for the sacred records, and for those witnesses to the 
truth who prophesied and suffered, more or less, throughout the dark 
est ages. (4) 

This reasonable expectation also is realized in the Mosaic and 
Christian revelations ;—both provided for their general publication— 
both instituted an order of men, not to conceal, but to read and teach 
the truth committed to them—both recognized a right in the people to 
search the record, and by it to judge of the ministration of the priests— 
both made it obligatory on the people to be taught—and both sepa- 
rated one day in seven to afford leisure for that purpose. 

Nothing but such a revelation, and with such accompanying circum. 
stances, appears capable of reaching the actual case of mankind, and 
of effectually instructing and bringing them under moral control ; (5) 
and, whether the Bible can be proved to be of Divine authority or not, 
this at least must be granted, that it presents itself to us under these 
circumstances, and claims, for this very reason, the most serious and 
inprejudiced attention. 


(4) Bishop Warburton endeavours to prove, by an elaborate argument in his 
‘Divine Legation,” that in the Greater Mysteries, the Divine Unity and the 
errors of Polytheism were constantly taught. This, however, is most satisfacto- 
rily disproved by Dr. Leland, in his “‘ Advantage and Necessity of a Divine Reve- 
.ation ;” to both of which works the reader is referred for informaticn as to those 
angular institutions—the heathen mysteries. 
(5) See note BR at the end of the chapter. 


68 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES "PART 


Notr A.—Page 63. 


Dirferent opinions have been held as to the ground of moral obligation. Gro- 
taus, Balguy, and Dr. S. Clarke, place it in the eternal and necessary fitness of 
things. To this there are two objections. The First is, that it leaves the dis. 
tinction between virtue and vice, in a great measure, arbitrary and indefinite, 
dependent upon our perception of fitness and unfitness, which, in different indi. 
viduals, will greatly differ. The Second is, that when a fitness or unfitness is 
proved, it is no more than the discovery of a natural essential difference or con 
gruity, which alone cannot constitute a moral obligation to choose what is fit, 
and to reject what is unfit. When we have proved a fitness in a certain course 
of action, we have not proved that it is obligatory. A second step is necessary 
before we can reach this conclusion. Cudworth, Butler, Price, and others, 
maintain, that virtue carries its own obligation in itself; that the understanding 
at once perceives a certain action to be right, and therefore it ought to be per. 
formed. Several objections lie to this notion. 1. It supposes the understandings 
of men to determine precisely in the same manner concerning all virtuous and 
vicious actions, which is contrary to fact. 2. It supposes a previous rule, by which 
the action is determined to be right ; but if the revealed will of God is not to be 
taken into consideration, what common rule exists among men? There is evi- 
dently no such rule, and therefore no means of certainly determining what is 
right. 3. If a common standard were known among men, and if the understand. 
ings of men determined in the same manner as to the conformity, or otherwise, 
of an action to that standard ; what-renders it a matter of obligation that any 
one should perform it? The rule must be proved to be binding, or no ground of 
obligation is established. 

An action is obligatory, say others, because it is agreeable to the moral sense. 
This is the theory of Lord Shaftesbury and Dr. Hutchinson. By moral sense 
appears to be meant an instinctive approbation of right, and abhorrence of wrong, 
prior to all reflection on their nature, or their consequences. If any thing else 
were understood by it, then the moral sense must be the same with conscience, 
which we know to vary with the judgment, and cannot therefore be the basis of 
moral obligation. If conscience be not meant, then the moral sense must ba 
considered as instinctive, a notion, certainly, which is disproved by the whole 
moral history of man. It may, indeed, be conceded, that such is the constitution 
of the human soul, that when those distinctions between actions, which have 
been taught by religious tradition or direct revelation, are known in their nature, 
relations, and consequences, the calm and sober judgments of men will approve 
of them; and that especially when they are considered abstractedly, that is, as 
not affecting and controlling their own interests and passions immediately, virtue 
may command complacency, and vice provoke abhorrence; but that, independent 
of reflection on their nature or their consequences, there is an instinctive prin. 
ciple in man which abhors evil, and loves good, is contradicted by that variety 
of opinion and feeling on the vices and virtues, which ob‘ains among all unin. 
structed nations. We applaud the forgiveness of an injury as magnanimous}; a 
savage despises it as mean. We think it a duty to support and cherish aged pa- 
rents; many nations, on the contrary, abandon them as useless, and throw 
them to the beasts of the field. Innumerable instances of this contrariety might 
be adduced, which are all contrary to the notion of instinctive sentiment. In- 
stincts operate uniformly, but this assumed moral sense does not. Beside, if it 
be mere matter of feeling, independent of judgment, to love virtue, anc abhor 


FIRST.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 69 


vice, the morality of the exercise of this principle 1s questionable ; for it would 
oe difficult to show, that there is any more morality, properly speaking, in the 
affections and disgusts of instinct than in those of the palate. If judgment, the 
«nowledge and comparison of things, be included, then this principle supposes a 
uniform and universal individual revelation, as to the nature of things, to every 
nian, or an intuitive faculty of determining their moral quality ; both of which 
are too absurd to be maintained. 

The only satisfactory conclusion on this subject, is that which refers moral 
obligation to the will of God. ‘ Obligation,” says Warburton, “necessarily im. 
plies an obliger, and the obliger must be different from, and not one and the same 
with, the obliged. Moral obligation, that is, the obligation of a free agent, farther 
implies a law, which enjoins and forbids; but a law is the imposition of an intel. 
ligent superior, who hath power to exact conformity thereto.” This lawgiver is 
God: and whatever may be the reasons which have led him to enjoin this, and to 
prohibit that, it is plain that the obligation to obey lies not merely in the fitness 
and propriety of a creature obeying an infinitely wise and good Creator, though 
such a fitness exists; but in that obedience being enjoined. 

Some, allowing this, would push the matter farther, in search of a more remote 
ground of obligation. They put the question, ‘‘ Why am I obliged to obey the 
will of God?” and give us the answer, ‘ Because obedience to the commands of 
a benevolent God must be productive of the agent’s happiness on the whole.” But 
this is putting out to sea again; for, 1. It cannot be proved that the considera. 
tion of our own happiness is a ground of moral obligation at all, except in some 
such vague sense as we use the term obligation when we say, ‘‘ We are obliged 
to take exercise, if we would preserve our health.” 2. We should be in danger 
of setting up a standard, by which to judge of the propriety of obeying God, when, 
indeed, we are but inadequate judges of what is for our happiness, on the whole: 
or. 3. It would make moral obligation to rest upon our faith, that God can will 
only our happiness, which is a singular principle on which to build our obedi. 
ence. On the contrary, the simple principle that moral obligation rests upon the 
will of God, by whatever means that will may be known, is unclogged with any 
of these difficulties. For, 1. It is founded on a clear principle of justice. He 
who made has an absolute property in us, and may therefore command us; and 
having actually commanded us, we cannot set up any claim of exemption—we 
are his. 2. He has connected reward with obedience, and punishment with dis. 
obedience, and therefore made it necessary for us to obey, if we would secure our 
own happiness. Thus we are obliged, both by the force of the abstract principle, 
and by the motive resulting from a sanctioned command; or, in the language 
of the schools, we are obliged in reason, and obliged in interest, but each obliga. 
tion evidently emanates from the will of God. Other considerations, such as the 
excellence and beauty of virtue, its tendency to individual happiness and univer- 
sal order, &c, may smooth the path of obedience, and render ‘“‘ his commandments 
joyous;” but the obligation, strictly speaking, can only rest in the will uf the su. 
perior and commanding power. 


Nore B.—Page 67. 


THovau some will allow the ignorance of former times, they think that the im 
proved reason of man is now more adequate to the discovery of moral truth. 

“ They contend, that the world was then in the infancy of knowledge; and” 
argue, as if the illustric as sages of old, (whom they nevertheless sometimes extol, 


70 THEOLCCICAL INSTITUTES. L\PART 


in terms of extravagant panegyric.) were verv babes in philosophy, such as the 
wise ones of later ages regard with a sort of contemptuous commiseration. 

*‘ But, may we not be permitted to ask, whence this assumed superiority of mo 
dern over ancient philosophers has arisen? and whence the extraordinary influx 
of light upon these latter times has been derived? Is there any one so infatuated 
by his admiration of the present age, as seriously to think, that the intellectual 
powers of man are stronger and more perfect now than they were wont to be: 
or that the particular talents of himself, or any of his contemporaries, are supe 
rior to those which shone forth in the luminaries of the Gentile world? Do the 
names even of Locke, Cudworth, Cumberland, Clarke, Wilkins, or Wollaston, 
(men so justly eminent in modern times, and who laboured so indefatigably to 
perfect the theory of natural religion,) convey to us an idea of greater intellectual 
ability than those of the consummate masters of the Portico, the Grove, or the 
Lyceum? How is it, then, that the advocates for the natural perfection, or per- 
fectibility, of human reason, do not perceive, that for all the superiority of the 
present over former times, with respect to religious knowledge, we must be in- 
debted to some intervening cause, and not to any actual enlargement of the hu. 
man faculties? Is it to be believed, that any man of the present age, of whatever 
natural talents he may be possessed, could have advanced one step beyond the 
heathen philosophers in his pursuit of Divine truth, had he lived in their times, 
and enjoyed only the light that was bestowed upon them? Or can it be fairly 
proved, that, merely by the light of nature, or by reasoning upon such data only 
as men possess who never heard of revealed religion, any moral or religious truth 
has been discovered since the days when Athens and Rome affected to give laws 
to the intellectual, as well as to tho political world? That great improvements 
have since been made, in framing systems of ethics, of metaphysics, and of what 
is called natural theology, need not be denied. But these improvements may 
easily be traced to one obvious cause, the widely diffused light of the Gospel, 
which, having shone, with more or less lustre, on all nations, has imparted, even 
to the most simple and illiterate of the sons of men, such a degree of knowledge 
on these subjects, as, without it, would be unattainable by the most learned and 
profound.” (Van Mivpert’s Boyle’s Lect.) 


———— ® 


CHAPTER IX. 


Tue EvIDENCES NECESSARY TO AUTHENTICATE A REVELATION.— 
External Evidence. 


Tue evidence usually offered in proof of the Divine authority of 
the Scriptures, may be divided into EXTERNAL, INTERNAL, and COLLA- 
TERAL. ‘The external evidence consists of miracles and prophecy , 
the internal evidence is drawn from the consideration of ihe doctrines 
taught, as being consistent with the character of God, and tending to 
promote the virtue and happiness of man; and the collateral evidence 
arises from a variety of circumstances, which, less directly than the 
former, prove the revelation to be of Divine authority, but are yet sup- 
posed to be of great weight in the argument. On each of these kinds of 
evidence we shall offer some general remarks, tending to prepare the way 
for a demonstration of the Divine authority of the Holy Scriptures. 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 71 


The principal and most appropriate evidences of a revelation from 
God, must be eaternal to the revelation itself. This has been before 
stated ; but it may require a larger consideration. 

A Divine revelation has been well defined to be “a discovery ot 
some proposition to the mind, which came not in by the usual exer- 
cise of its faculties, but by some miraculous Divine interposition and 
attestation, either mediate or immediate.” (Doppriper’s Lectures, part 
5, definition 68.) It is not thought necessary to attempt to prove such 
a revelation possible; for,as our argument is supposed to be with a 
person who acknowledges, not only that there is a God, but that he is 
the Creator of men; it would be absurd in such a one to deny, that 
he who gave us minds capable of knowledge is not able, instantly and 
immediately, to convey knowledge to us; and that he who has given 
us the power of communicating ideas to each other, should have no 
means of communicating with us immediately from himself. 

We need not inquire whether external evidence of a revelation is in 
all cases requisite to him who immediately and at first receives it ; for 
the question is not, whether private revelations have ever been made 
by God to individuals, and what evidence is required to authenticate 
them ; but what is the kind of evidence which we ought to require of 
one who professes to have received a revelation of the will of God, with 
a command to communicate it to us, and to enjoin it upon our accept- 
ance and submission, as the rule of our opinions and manners. 

He may believe that a divine communication has been made to 
himself; but Azs belief has no authority to command ours. He may 
have actually received it; but we have not the means of knowing it 
without proof. 

That proof is not the high and excellent nature of the truths he 
teaches: in other words, that which i is called the internal evidence can- 
not be that proof. For we cannot tell whether the doctrines he teaches, 
though they should be capable of a higher degree of rational demon- 
stration than any delivered to the world before, may not be the fruits of 
his own mental labour. He may be conscious that they are not ; but we 
have no means of knowing that of which he is conscious, except by his 
own testimony. ‘To us therefore they would have no authority but as 
the opinions of a man, whose intellectual attainments we might admire, 
but to whom we could not submit as to an infallible guide ; and the less 
su, if any part of the doctrine taught by him were either mysterious and 
above our reason, or contrary to our interests, prejudices, and passions. 

If therefore any person should profess to have received a revelation 
of truth from God to teach to mankind, and that he was directed to com- 
mand their obedience to it on pain of the Divine displeasure, he would 
ne asked for some external authentication of his mission ; nor would the 
reasonableness and excellence of his doctrines be accepted in place of 


72 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. IPART 


this. The latter might entitle him to cttention ; but nothing short of the 
former would be thought a ground sufficiently strong for yielding to him 
an absolute obedience. Without it he might reason, and be heard with 
respect ; but he could not command. On this very reasonable ground, 
the Jews, on one occasion, asked our Lord, “ By what authority doest 
thou these things?” and on another, “ What sign showest thou unto us?’ 

Agreeably to this, the authors both of the Jewish and the Christian 
revelations profess to have authenticated their mission by the two 
great external proofs, Mrractes and Propuecy; and it remains te 
be considered whether this kind of authentication be reasonably suff- 
cient to command our faith and obedience. 

The question is not, Whether we may not conceive of external 
proofs of the mission of Moses, and of Christ and his apostles, differ 
ing from those which are assumed to have been given, and more con- 
vincing. In whatever way the authentication had been made, we 
might have conceived of modes of proof differing in kind or more ample 
in circumstance ; so that to ground an objection upon the absence of a 
particular kind of proof for which we have a preference, would be 
trifling. (6) But this is the question, Is a mission to teach the will of 


v 

(6) **We know not beforehand what degree or kind of natural information it 
were to be expected God would afford men, each by his own reason and experi- 
ence, nor how far he would enable and effectually dispose them to communicate 
it, whatever it should be; to each other; nor whether the evidence of it would be 
certain, highly probable, or doubtful; nor whether it would be given with equal 
clearness and conviction to all. Nor could we guess, upon any good ground I 
mean, whether natural knowledge, or even the faculty itself, by which we are 
capable of attaining it, reason, would be given us at once,’ gradually. In like 
manner we are wholly ignorant what degree of new know alge, it were to be ex- 
pected, God would give mankind, by revelation, upon supyusition of his affording 
one; or how far, or in what way, he would interpose miraculously to qualify them, 
to whom he should originally make the revelation, for communicating the know. 
ledge given by it, and to secure their doing it to the age in which they should 
live, and to secure its being transmitted to posterity. We are equally ignorant 
whether the evidence of it would be certain, or highly probable, or doubtful : 
or whether all who should have any degree of instruction from it, and any de. 
gree of evidence of its truth, would have the same; or whether the scheme would 
be revealed at once, or unfolded gradually. Nay, we are not, in any sort, able to 
judge whether it were to have been expected, that the revelation should have 
been committed to writing, or left to be handed down, and cor.sequently corrupt 
ed, by verbal tradition, and, at length, sunk under it, if mankind so pleased 
and during such time as they are permitted, in the degree they evidently are, te 
act as they will. 
_ Now, since it has been shown that we have no principles of reason upon 

which to judge beforehand, how it were to be expected revelation should have 
been left, or what was most suitable to the Divine plan of government in any of 
the forementioned respects; it must be quite frivolous to object afterward as to 
any of them, against its being left one way rather than another; for this would 
be to ob’ect against things, upon account of their being different from our ex 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 73 


God to man, under his immediate authority, sufficiently authenticated 
when miracles are really performed, and prophecies actually and une. 
quivocally accomplished? ‘To this point only the inquiry need now go; 
for whether real miracles were performed by Moses and Christ, and 
whether prophecies were actually uttered by them, and received une. 
quivocal accomplishment, will be reserved for a farther stage of the 
in yuiry. 

There is a popular, a philosophic, and a theological sense of the 
term miracle. 

A miracle, in the popular sense, is a prodigy, or an extraordinary 
event, which surprises us by its novelty. In a more accurate and 
philosophic sense, a miracle is an effect which does not follow from 
any of the regular laws of nature, or which is inconsistent with some 
known law of it, or contrary to the settled constitution and course of 
things. Accordingly, all miracles presuppose an established system 
of nature, within the limits of which they operate, and with the order 
of which they disagree. 

Of a miracle in the theological sense, many definitions have been 
given. (7) That of Dr. Samuel Clarke is,—“A miracle is a work 
effected in a manner unusual, or different from the common and regu- 
lar method of providence, by the interposition of God himself, or of 
some intelligent agent superior to man, for the proof or evidence of 
some particular doctrine, or in attestation of the authority of some 
particular person.” 

Mr. Horne defines a miracle to be “an effect or event contrary to 
the established constitution or course of things, or a sensible suspen- 
sion or controlment of, or deviation from, the known laws of nature, 
wrought either by the immediate act, or by the assistance, or by the 
permission of God.” (Introduction to the Critical Study of the Scrip- 
tures, vol. 1, c. 4, sec. 2.) This definition would be more complete in 
tne theological sense, if the last clause in Dr. S. Clarke’s definition 
were added to it, “ for the proof or evidence of some particular doctrine, 


pectations, which has been shown to be without reason. And thus we see that 
the only question concerning the truth of Christianity is, whether it be a real 
revelation ; not whether it be attended with every circumstance which we should 
liave looked for; and concerning the authority of Scripture, whether it be what 
i+ claims to be; not whether it be a book of such sort, and so promulged as weak 
men are apt to fancy a book containing a Divine revelation should be. And, 
ther:fore, neither obscurity, nor seeming inaccuracy of style, nor various read- 
ings, nor early disputes about the authors of particular parts, nor any other things 
of the like kind, though they had been much more considerabie in degree than 
they are, could overthrow the authority of the Scripture, unless the prophets, 
apostles, or our Lord, had promised, that the book, containing the Divine revela. 
tion, should be secure from those things.” (BuTver’s Analogy.) 

(7) The reader may see severa. of them enumerated and examined in Ded 


dridge’s Lrctures, part 5. 


74 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. ‘PART 


or in attestation of the authority of some particular person.” With this 
addition the definition will be sufficiently satisfactory, as it explains the 
nature of the phenomenon, and gives the reason or end of its occurrence. 

Farmer, in his “ Dissertation on Miracles,” denies to any created 
intelligences, however high, the power of working miracles, when act- 
ing from themselves alone. This dispute is only to be settled by a 
strict definition of terms; but whatever power may be allowed to supe- 
rior beings to produce miraculous effects, or effects apparently so, by the 
control they may be supposed to exert over natural objects ; yet, as they 
are all under the government of God, they have certainly no power to 
interfere with his work, and the order of his providence, at pleasure. 
Whatever they do, therefore, whether by virtue of natural power, or 
power specially communicated, they must do it by commission, or at 
least by license. 

The miracles under consideration are such effects as agree with the 
definition just given, and which are wrought either immediately by God 
himself, to attest the Divine mission of particular persons, and to authen- 
ticate their doctrines; or by superior beings commissioned by him for 
the same purpose; or by the persons themselves who profess this 
Divine authority, in order to prove that they have been invested with 
it by God. 

The possibility of miracles wrought by the power of God, can be 
denied by none but Atheists, or those whose system is substantially 
Atheistic. Spinosa denies that any power can supersede that of nature ; 
or that any thing can disturb or interrupt the order of things: and ac. 
cordingly he defines a miracle to be “a rare event happening in conse- 
quence of some laws that are unknown tous.” This is a definition of 
a prodigy, not of a miracle; but if miracles in the proper sense be al- 
lowed, that is, if the facts themselves which have been commonly called 
miraculous be not disputed, this method of accounting for them is obvi- 
ously most absurd; inasmuch as it is supposed that these unknown laws 
chanced to come into operation, just when men professing to be endued 
with miraculous powers wished them, while yet such laws were to them 
unknown. For instance, when Moses contended with the Egyptian 
magicians, though these laws were unknown to him, he ventured to 
depend upon their operation, and by chance they served his purpose. 

To one who believes in a Supreme Creator of all things, and the de. 
pendence of all things upon his power and will, miraculous interpositions 
must be allowed possible, nor is there any thing in them repugnant to 
our ideas of his wisdom and immutability, and the perfection of his 
works, ‘They are departures from the ordinary course of God’s opera- 
tion; but this does not arise from any natural necessity, to remedy an 
unforeseen evil, or to repair imperfections in his work ; the reasons for 
them are moral and not natural reasons, and the ends they are intendea 


fIRST.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 715 


to accomplish are moral ends. They remind us, when they occur, that 
there is a power superior to nature, and that all nature, even to its first 
and most uniform laws, depends upon Him. They are among the chief 
means by which he who is by nature invisible, makes himself as it were 
visible to his creatures, who are so prone to forget him entirely, or to 
lose sight of him by reason of the interposition of the veil of material 
objects. (8) 

Granting then the possibility of miraculous interposition on the part 
oi the great Author of nature, on special occasions, and for great ends, 
in what way and under what circumstances does such an interposition 
authenticate the Divine mission of those who profess to be sent by him 
to teach his will to mankind? 

The argument is, that as the known and established course of nature 
has been fixed by him who is the Creator and Preserver of all things, it 
can never be violated, departed from, or controlled, but either immedi- 


(8) Bishop Butler has satisfactorily shown, in his Analogy, (part ii, c. 11,) 
that there can be no such presumption against miracles as to render them, in any 
wise, incredible, but what would conclude against such uncommon appearances 
as comets, and against there being any such powers in nature as magnetism and 
electricity, so contrary to the properties of other bodies not endued with these 
powers. But he observes, ‘‘ ‘Take in the consideration of religion, or the moral 
system of the world, and then we see distinct, particular reasons for miracles, to 
afford mankind instruction, additional to that of nature, and to attest the truth 
of it; and our being able to discern reasons for them, gives a positive credibility 
to the history of them, in cases where those reasons hold.” 

‘<It is impossible,” says an oracle among modern unbelievers, (Voltaire,) ** that 
a Being, infinitely wise, should make laws in order to violate them. He would 
not derange the machine of his own construction, unless it were for its improve- 
ment. But as a God, he hath, without doubt, made it as perfect as possible ; or, 
if he had foreseen any imperfection likely to result from it, he would surely have 
provided against it from the beginning, and not be under a necessity of changing 
it afterward. He is both unchangeable and omnipotent, and therefore can nei- 
ther have any desire to alter the course of nature, nor have any need to do so.” 

“This argument,” says Dr. Van Mildert, ‘is grounded on a misconception or 
a misrepresentation of the design of miracles, which is not the remedy of any 
physical defect, not to rectify any original or accidental imperfections in the laws 
of nature, but to manifest to the world the interposition of the Almighty, for espe. 
cial purposes of a moral kind. It is simpy to make known to mankind, that it is 
he who addresses them, and that whatever is accompanied with this species of 
evidence, comes from him, and claims their implicit belief and obedience. The 
perfection, therefore, or imperfection, of the laws of nature has nothing to do with 
the question. All nature is subservient to the will of God; and as his existence 
and attributes are manifest in the ordinary course of nature, so, in the extraor- 
dinary work ot miracles, his will is manifested by the display of his absolute 
sovereignty over the course of nature. Thus, in both instances, the Creator is 
glorified in his works ; and it is made to appear, that ‘by him all things consist,’ 
and that ‘for his pleasure they are, and were created.’ This seems a sufficient 
answer to any reasoning, @ priori, against miracles, from their suppcsed incon. 
_ sistency with the Divine perfections.” 


76 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


ately by himself, or mediately by other beings at his command, and by 
his assistance or permission; for if this be not allowed, we must deny 
either the Divine omnipotence, or his natural government; and, if these 
be allowed, the other follows. Every real miracle is a work of God, 
done specially by him, by his permission, or with his concurrence. 

In order to distinguish a real miracle, it is necessary that the com- 
mon course vf nature should be understood ; for without some aniece- 
dent knowledge of the operation of physical causes, an event might be 
deemed miraculous which was merely strange, and through our ignc- 
rance inexplicable. Should an earthquake happen in a country never 
before visited by such a calamity within the memory of man, by the 
ignorant it might be considered miraculous ; whereas an earthquake 
is a regular effect of the present established laws of nature. 

But as the course of nature and the operation of physical causes are 
but partially understood, and will perhaps never be fully comprehended 
by the most inquiring minds, it seems necessary that such miracles as 
are intended to authenticate any religious system, promulged for the 
common benefit of mankind, should be effects produced upon objects 
whose properties have been the subject of common and long observation ; 
that it should be contrary to some known laws by which the objects in 
question have been uniformly and long observed to be governed; or that 
the proximate cause of the effect should be known to have no adequate 
power or adaptation to produce it. When these circ imstances occur 
separately, and more especially when combined, a sufficient antecedent 
acquaintance with the course of nature exists to warrant the conclusion, 
that the effect is miraculous, or, in other words, that it is produced by the 
special interposition of God. 

Whether the works ascribed to Moses and to Christ, and recorded in 
Scripture were actually performed by them, will be considered in another 
place ; but here it is proper to observe, that, assuming their actual 
occurrence, they are of such a nature as to leave no reasonable doubt 
of their miraculous character ; and from them we may borrow a few 
instances for the sake of illustrating the preceding observations, with- 
out prejudging the argument. 

The rod cast from the hand of Moses becomes a serpent. Here the 
subject was well known; it was a rod, a branch separated from a tree, 
and it was obviously contrary to the known and established course of 
nature, that it should undergo so signal a transformation. If tha fact 
can be proved, the miracle must therefore follow. 

The sea is parted at the stretching out of the rod of Moses. Here is 
no adaptation of the proximate cause to produce the effect, which was 
obviously in opposition to the known qualities of water. A recession of 
the sea from the shores would have taken down the whcle mass of 
water from the head of the gulf; but here the waters divid«, and, sow 


FIRST. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 77 


trary to their nature, stand up on each side, leaving a passage for 
the host of Israel. 

It is in the nature of clouds to be carried about by the wind; but 
the cloud which went before the Israelites in the wilderness, rested on 
their tabernacle, moved when they were commanded to march, and 
directed their course ; rested when they were to pitch their tents, and 
was a pillar of direction by day; and, by night, when it is the nature 
of clouds to become dark, the rays of the sun no longer permeating 
them, this cloud shone with the brightness of fire. 

In all these cases, if the facts be established, there can be no doubt 
as to their miraculous character. . 

“ Were a physician instantly to give sight to a blind man, by anoint- 
ing his eyes with a chemical preparation, to the nature and qualities 
of which we were absolute strangers, the cure would to us, undoubtedly, 
be wonderful ; but we could not pronounce it miraculous, because it 
might be the physical effect of the operation of the unguent upon the 
eye. But were he to give sight to his patient, merely by commanding 
him to receive it, or by anointing his eyes with spittle, we should, with 
the utmost confidence, pronounce the cure to be a miracle; because 
we know perfectly, that neither the human voice nor human spittle 
has, by the established constitution of things, any such power over the 
diseases of the eye. No one is ignorant, that persons, apparently 
dead, are often restored to their families and friends, by being treated, 
during suspended animation, in the manner recommended by the Hu. 
mane Society. ‘To the vulgar, and sometimes even to men of science, 
these resuscitations appear very wonderful ; but as they are known to 
be effected by physical agency, they cannot be considered as miracu- 
lous deviations from the laws of nature. On the other hand, no one 
could doubt of his having witnessed a real miracle, who had seen a 
person, that had been four days dead, come alive out of the grave at 
the call of another, or who had even beheld a person exhibiting all the 
common evidences of death, instantly resuscitated, merely by being 
desired to live.” (Gleig’s edition of Stackhouse’s History of the Bible, 
vol. ii, p. 241.) 

In all such instances, the common course of nature is sufficiently 
known to support the conclusion, that the power which thus interferes 
with, and controls it, and produces effects to which the visible, natural 
causes are known not to be adequate, is God. (9) 


(9) It is observable, that no miracles appear to have been wrought by human 
agency before the time of Moses and Aaron, in whose days, not only had the 
world long existed, but consequently the course of nature had been observed for 
a long period: and farther, these first miracles were wrought among a refined 
and observant people, who had their philosophers, to whom the course of nature, 
- and the operation of physical causes, were subjects of keen investigation 


78 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


But it is also necessary, in order to prove that even these miracu- 
lous events are authentications of a Divine mission, that a direct con- 
nection between the power of God, exerted in a miraculous act, and 
the messenger, and his message, should be established. 

The following circumstances would appear sufficiently to establish 
such a connection:—1. When the miracles occur at the time when he, 
who professes to have a Divine mission from God, is engaged in mak- 
ing known the will of God to mankind, by communicating the revela- 
tion he has received, and performing other acts connected with his 
office. 2. When, though they are works above human power, they are 
wrought by the messenger himself, or follow his volitions. ‘The force 
of this argument may be thus exhibited :-— 

When such unequivocal miracles as those we have pointed out occur 
only in connection with an actual profession by certain persons, that 
they have a Divine authority to teach and command mankind, this is 
a strong presumption, that the works are wrought by God in order to 
authenticate this pretension; but when they are performed mediately 
by these persons themselves, by their own will, and for the express 
purpose of establishing their mission, inasmuch as they are allowed to 
be real miracles, which no power, but that of God, can effect, it is then 
clear that God is with them, and that his co-operation is an authenti- 
cating and visible seal upon their commission. 

It is not necessary, in this stage, to specify the rules by which real 
and pretended miracles are to be distinguished; nor to inquire, 
whether the Scriptures allow, that, in some cases, miracles have been 
wrought in support of falsehood. Both these subjects will be examined 
when we come to speak of the miracles of Scripture. The ground 
established is, that miracles are possible ; and that, when real miracles 
occur under the circumstances we have mentioned, they are satisfac. 
tory evidences of a Divine mission. 

But though this should be allowed, and also that the eye witnesses of 
such miracles would be bound to admit the proof, it has been made a 
question, whether their testimony affords sufficient reason to others to 
admit the fact that such events actually took place, and consequently 
whether we are bound to acknowledge the authority of that mission, 
in attestation of which the miracles are said to have been wrought. 

If this be admitted, the benefits of a revelation must be confined to 
those who witnessed its attestation by miracle, or similar attestations 
must be afforded to every individual; for, as no revelation can be a 
benefit unless it possess Divine authority, which alone can infallibly 
mark the distinction between truth and error, should the authentication 
be partial, the benefit of the communication of ‘an infallible doctrine 
must also be partial. We are all so much interested in this. because 
no religious system can plead the authentication of perpetual miracle, 


FIRST.] TILEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 719 


that it deserves special consideration. Either this principle is unsound, 
or we must abandon all hope of discovering a religion of Divine authority. 

As miracles are facts, they, like other facts, may be reported to 
others ; and, as in the case of the miracles in question, bearing the cha. 
racters which have been described, the competency of any man of ordi- 
nary understanding to determine whether they were actually wrought 
cannot be doubted; if the witnesses are credible, it is reasonable that 
their testimony should be admitted: for if the testimony be such as, in 
inatters of the greatest moment to us in the affairs of common life, we 
should not hesitate to act upon; if it be such, that, in the most import- 
ant affairs, men do uniformly act upon similar or even weaker testimony ; 
it would be mere perverseness to reject it in the case in question; and 
would argue rather a disinclination to the doctrine which is thus proved, 
than any rational doubt of the sufficiency of the proof itself. 

The objection is put in its strongest form by Mr. Hume, in his Es. 
says, and the substance of it is,—Eaperience is the ground of the cre- 
dit we give to human testimony ; but this experience is by no means 
constant, for we often find men prevaricate and deceive. On the other 
hand, it is experience, in like manner, which assures us of those laws of 
nature, in the violation of which the notion of a miracle consists ; but 
this experience is constant and uniform. A miracle is an event which, 
from its nature, is inconsistent with our experience ; but the falsehood 
of testimony is not inconsistent with experience: it is contrary to ex 
perience that miracles should be true, but not contrary to experience 
that testimony should be false ; and, therefore, no human testimony 
can, in any case, render them credible. 

This argument has been met at large by many authors, (1) but the 
following extracts afford ample refutation :— 

«“'The principle of this objection is, that it is contrary to experience 
that ». miracle should be true; but not contrary to experience that 
testimony should be false. 

“ Now there appears a small ambiguity in the term ‘ experience,’ 
end in the phrases ‘ contrary to experience,’ or ‘ contradicting expe- 
rience, which it may be necessary to remove in the first place. Strictly 
speaking, the narrative of a fact is then only contrary to experience, 
when the fact is related to have existed at a time and place; at which 
time and place, we, being present, did not perceive it to exist; as if it 
should be asserted that, in a particular room, and at a particular hour 
of a certain day, a man was raised from the dead; in which room, 


(1) See Campsetv’s Dissertation on Miracles; Price’s Four Dissertations, 
Diss. 4; Patey’s Evidences; Apam’s Essay on Miracles; Bishop Dovucvass’s 
Cniterion; Dwicut’s Theology, vol. ii; Dr. Hry’s Norrisian Lectures, vo) 1, 
Van Miiperv’s Boyle’s Lectures, vol. i. 


80 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. ‘ (PART 


and at the time specified, we being present and looking on, perceived 
no such event to have taken place. 

“ Here the assertion is contrary to experience, properly so called - and 
this is a contrariety which no evidence can surmount. It-matters 
aothing whether the fact be of a miraculous nature or not. But although 
this be the experience and the contrariety, which Archbishop Tillotson 
alleged in the quotation with which Mr. Hume opens his Essay, it is 
certainly not that experience, nor that contrariety, which Mr. Hume 
himself intended to object. And, short of this, I know no intelligible 
signification which can be affixed to the term ‘ contrary to experience,’ 
but one, viz., that of not having ourselves experienced any thing similar 
to the thing related, or such things not being generally experienced by 
uthers. I say, ‘not generally ;’ for to state, concerning the fact in 
question, that no such thing was ever experienced, or that wnzversal ex- 
perience is against it, is to assume the subject of the controversy 

“ Now the improbability which arises from the want (for this properly 
is a want, not a contradiction,) of experience, is only equal to the pro- 
bability there is, that if the thing were true, we should experience things 
similar to it, or that such things would be generally experienced. Sup- 
pose it then to be true, that miracles were wrought upon the first pro- 
mulgation of Christianity, when nothing but miracles could decide its 
authority, is it certain that such miracles would be repeated so often, 
and in so many places, as to become objects of general experience? Is 
it a probability approaching to certainty? Is it a probability of any 
great strength or force? Is it suchas no evidence can encounter? And 
yet this probability is the exact converse, and therefore the exact mea- 
sure of the improbability which arises from the want of experience, 
and which Mr. Hume represents as invincible by human testimony. 

“It is not like alleging a new law of nature, or a new experiment 
in natural philosephy ; because, when these are related, it is expected 
that, under the same circumstances, the same effect will follow uni- 
versally ; and in proportion as this expectation is justly entertained, 
the want of a corresponding experience negatives the history, But to 
expect concerning a miracle, that it should succeed upon a repetition, 
is to expect that which would make it cease to be a miracle, which is 
contrary to its nature as such, and would totally destroy the use and 
purpose for which it was wrought. 

“The force of experience, as an objection to miracles, is founded in 
the presumption, either that the course of nature is invariable, or that, 
if it be ever varied, variations will be frequent and general. Has the 
necessity of this alternative been demonstrated? Permit us to call the 
course of nature the agency of an intelligent Bemg ; and is there any 
good reason for judging this state of the case to be probable? Ought 
we not rather to expect, that such a Being, on occasions of peculiar 


FIRST.] a THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 81 


importance, may interrupt the order which he had appointea, yet, that 
such occasions should return seldom; that these interruptions, conse. 
quently, should be confined to the experience of a few; that the want 
of it, therefore, in many, should be matter neither of surprise nor 
objection ? 

“ But as a continuation of the argument from experience, it is said, 
that when we advance accounts of miracles, we assign effects without 
Causes, or we attribute effects to causes inadequate to the purpose, or 
to causes, of the operation of which we have no experience. Of what 
causes, we may ask, and of what effects does the objection speak? If 
it be answered, that when we ascribe the cure of the palsy to a touch, 
of blindness to the anointing of the eyes with clay, or the raising of the 
dead to a word, we lay ourselves open to this imputation; we reply, 
that we ascribe no such effects to such causes. We perceive no virtue 
or energy in these things more than in other things of the same kind. 
They are merely signs, to connect the miracle with its end. The effect 
we ascribe simply to the volition of the Deity ; of whose existence and 
power, not to say of whose presence and agency, we have previous and 
independent proof. We have, therefore, all we seek for in the works 
of rational agents—a sufficient power, and an adequate motive. Ina 
word, once believe that there is a God, and miracles are not incredible! — 

“ Mr. Hume states the case of miracles to be, a contest of opposite 
improbabilities ; that is to say, a question whether it be more improbable 
that the miracle should be true, or the testimony false ; and this I think 
a fair account of the controversy. “But herein I remark a want of 
argumentative justice, that, in describing the improbability of miracles, 
he suppresses all those circumstances of extenuation which result from 
our knowledge of the existence, power, and disposition of the Deity ; 
his concern in the creation; the end answered by the miracle; the 
importance of that end, and its subserviency to the plan pursued in the 
works of nature. As Mr. Hume has represented the question, miracles 
are alike incredible to him who is previously assured of the constant 
agency of a Divine Being, and to him who believes that no such Being 
exists in the universe. They are equally incredible, whether related to 
have been wrought upon occasions the most deserving, and for purposes 
the most beneficial, or for no assignable end whatever, or for an end 
confessedly trifling or pernicious. ‘This surely cannot be a correct 
statement. In adjusting also the other side of the balance, the strength 
and weight of testimony, this author has provided an answer to every 
possible accumulation of historical proof, by telling us that we are not 
obliged to explain how the story or the evidence arose. Now I think 
that we are obliged ; not. perhaps, to show by positive accounts how 
it did, but by a probable hypothesis how it might so happen. The ex- 


istence of the testimony is a phenomenon ; the truth of the fact solves 
Vou. I. 6 


$2 THEOLOGICAL, INSTITUTES. [PART 


the phenomenon. If we reject this solution, we ought to have some 
other to rest in; and none, even by our adversaries, can be admitted, 
which is not consistent with the principles that regulate human affaire 
and human conduct at present, or which makes men then to have been 
a different kind of beings from what they are now. 

« But the short consideration which, independently of every other 
convinces me that there is no solid foundation for Mr. Hume’s con. 
clusion, is the following :—When a theorem is proposed to a mathe- 
matician, the first thing he does with it is to try it upon a simple case; 
and if it produce a false result, he is sure that there is some mistake 
in the demonsiration. Now, to proceed in this way with what may 
be called Mr. Hume’s theorem,—If twelve men, whose probity and 
good sense I had long known, should seriously and circumstantially 
relate to me an account of a miracle wrought before their eyes, and 
in which it was impossible that they should be deceived: if the go- 
vernor of the country, hearing a rumour of this account, should call 
these men into his presence, and offer them a short proposal, either 
to confess the imposture, or submit to be tied up to a gibbet ; if they 
should refuse with one voice to acknowledge that there existed any 
falsehood or imposture in the case; if this threat were communicated 
to them separately, yet with no different effect ; if it was at last exe- 
cuted ; if I myself saw them, one after another, consenting to be rack- 
ed, burned, or strangled, rather than give up the truth of their account ; 
still, if Mr. Hume’s rule be my guide, [ am not to believe them. Now 
I undertake to say, that there exists not a skeptic in the world who 
would not believe them, or who would defend such incredulity.”— 
(Patey’s Evidences, Preparatory Considerations.) 

“The essayist,” says the bishop of Llandaff, “who has most elabo- 
rately drawn out this argument, perplexes the subject, by attempting to 
adjust, in a sort of metaphysical balance of his own invention, the 
degrees of probability resulting from what he is pleased to call opposite 
experiences ; viz. the experience of men’s veracity, on the one hand, 
and the experience of the firm and unalterable constitution of the laws 
of nature, on the other. But the fallacy in this mode of reasoning is 
obvious. For, in the first place, miracles can, at most, only be contrary 
to the experience of those who never saw them performed: to say 
therefore, that they are contrary to general experience, (including, as it 
should seem, the experience even of those who profess to have seen and 
to have examined them,) is to assume the very point in question. And,in 
the next place, it is equally fallacious to allege against them the expe. 
rience of the unalterable constitution of the laws of nature; because, 
unless the fact be previously investigated, whether thase laws have ever 
been altered or suspended, this is likewise a gratuitous assumption. 

“ In truth this boasted balance of probabilities could only be employed 


FIRST.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 83 


with effect, in the cause of infidelity, by counterpoising, against the 
testimony of those who professed to have seen miracles, the testimony 
ot those (if any such were to be found) who, under the circumstances, 
and with the same opportunities of forming a judgment, professed to 
nave been convinced, that the things which they saw were Nor mira- 
cles, but mere impostures and delusions. Here would be indeed expe- 
rience against experience: and a skeptic might be well employed in 
estimating the comparative weight of the testimony on either side ; in 
order to judge of the credibility or incredibility of the things proposed 
to his belief. But when he weighs only the experience of those, to 
whom the opportunity of judging ofa miracle by personal observation 
has never been afforded, against the experience of those who declare 
themselves to be eye witnesses of the fact; instead of opposite. expe- 
riences, properly so called, he is only balancing total inexperience on 
the one hand, against positive experience on the other. 

“ Nor will it avail any thing to say, that this particular inexperience 
of those who have never seen miracles, is compensated by their general 
experience of the unalterable course of nature. For, as we have already 
observed, this is altogether a mere petitio principit. It is arguing, upon 
a supposition wholly incapable of proof, that the course of nature is 
indeed so unalterably fixed, that even God himself, by whom its laws 
were ordained, cannot, when he sees fit, suspend their operation. 

«There is therefore a palpable fallacy, (however a subtle metaphy- 
siclan may attempt to disguise it by ingenious sophistry,) in repre- 
senting the experience of mankind as being opposite to the testimony 
on which our belief of miracles is founded. For, the opposite expe- 
riences, as they are called, are not contradictory to each other; since 
‘there is’ (as has been justly observed) ‘no inconsistency in believing 
them both.’ A miracle necessarily supposes an established and gene- 

ally unaltered (though not unalterable) course of things; for, in its 
nterception of such a course lies the very essence of a miracle, as 
here understood. Our experience, therefore, of the course of nature 
leads us to expect its continuance, and to act accordingly ; but it does 
not set aside any proofs, from valid testimony, of a deviation from it: 
neither can our being personally unacquainted with a matter of fact, 
which took place a thousand years ago, or in a distant part of the 
world, warrant us in disbelieving the testimony of personal witnesses 
of the fact. Common sense revolts at the absurdity of considering one 
man’s ignorance or inexperience as a counterpoise to another man’s 
knowledge and experience of a matter of fact. Yet on no better foun- 
dation does this favourite argument of infidels appear to rest.” 

The substance of Dr. Campbell’s answer to Mr. Hume’s argument 
aas been thus given :— 

“ The evidence arising from human testimony is not solely derived 


84 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


' from experience: on the contrary, testimony has a natural influence 
on belief, antecedent to experience. The early and unlimited assent 
given to testimony by children, gradually contracts as they advance in 
life ; it is therefore more consonant to truth to say, that our diffidence 
in testimony is the result of experience, than that our faith in it has 
this foundation. Beside, the uniformity of experience in favour of any 
fact is not a proof against its being reversed in a particular instance, 
The evidence arising from the single testimony of a man of known 
veracity, will go farther to establish a belief of its being actually re- 
versed. If his testimony be confirmed by a few others of the same 
character, we cannot withhold our assent to the truth of it. Now, 
though the operations of nature are governed by uniform laws, and 
though we have not the testimony of our senses in favour of any vio- 
lation of them; still, if in particular instances we have the testimony 
of thousands of our fellow creatures, and those, too, men of strict in. 
tegrity, swayed by no motives of ambition or interest, and governed by 
the principles of common sense, that they were actually witnesses of these 
violations, the constitution of our nature obliges us to believe them. 
“Mr. Hume’s reasoning is founded upon too limited a view of the 
laws and course of nature. If we consider things duly, we shall find 
that lifeless matter is utterly incapable of obeying any laws, or of being 
endued with any powers; and, therefore, what is usually called the 
course of nature, can be nothing else than the arbitrary will and pleasure 
of God, acting continually upon matter according to certain rules of 
uniformity, still bearing a relation tocontingencies. So that it is as easy 
for the Supreme Being to alter what men think the course of nature, as to 
preserve it. ‘Those effects, which are produced on the world regularly 
and indesinently, and which are usually termed the works of nature, 
prove the constant providence of the Deity ; those, on the contrary, 
which, upon any extraordinary occasion, are produced in such a man- 
ner as it is manifest could not have been either by human power, or by 
what is called chance, prove undeniably the immediate interposition of 
the Deity on that especial occasion. God, it must be recollected, is the 
Governor of the moral as well as of the physical world; and since the 
moral well being of the universe is of more consequence than its physi- 
cal order and regularity, it follows obviously, tnat the laws, conformably 
with which the material world seems generally to be regulated, are sub. 
servient and may occasionally yield to the laws by which the moral 
world is governed. Although, therefore, a miracle is contrary to the 
usual course of nature, (and would indeed lose its beneficial effect if it 
were not so,) it cannot thence be inferred, that it is ‘a vioration of the 
laws of nature,’ allowing the term to include a regard to moral tenden- 
cies. ‘The laws by which a wise and holy God governs the world, 
cannot (unless he is pleased to reveal them) be learnt in any other way 


FIRST.) THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 85 


than from testimony ; since, on this supposition, nothing but testimony 
can bring us acquainted with the whole series of his dispensations ; and 
this kind of knowledge is absolutely necessary previously to our cor- 
rectly inferring those laws. Testimony, therefore, must be admitted as 
constituting the principal means of discovering the real laws by which 
the universe has been regulated; that testimony assures us, that the 
apparent course of nature has often been interrupted to produce impor- 
tant moral effects ; and we must not at random disregard such testimony, 
because in estimating its credibility we ought to look almost infinitely 
more at the moral than at the physical circumstances connected with 
any particular event.” (2) 

Such evidence as that of miracles, transmitted to iietang times by 
satisfactory testimony, a revelation may then receive. The fitness of 
this kind of evidence to render that revelation an instant and universal 
yenefit, wherever it comes, is equally apparent; for, as Mr. Locke 
observes, (Reasonableness of Christianity,) “the bulk of mankind have 
uot leisure nor. capacity for demonstration, nor can they carry a train of 
proofs; but as to the Worker of miracles, all his commands become 


(2) It would be singular, did we not know the inconsistencies of error, that 
Mr. Hume himself, as Dr. Campbell shows, gives up his own argument. 

‘‘T own,” these are his words, ‘there may possibly be miracles, or violations 
of the usual course of nature, of such a kind as to admit a proof from human tes. 
timony, though perhaps [in this he is modest enough, he avers nothing ; perhaps] 
it will be impossible to find any such in all the records of history.” To this 
declaration he subjoins the following supposition -—‘‘ Suppose all authors, in all 
languages, agree that from the first of January, 1600, there was a total darkness 
over the whole earth for eight days; suppose that the tradition of this extraor- 
dinary event is still strong and lively among the people; that all travellers who 
return from foreign countries, bring us accounts of the same traditions, without 
the least variation or contradiction: it is evident that our present philosophers, 
instead of doubting of that fact, ought to receive it for certain, and ought to 
search for the causes whence it might be derived.” Could one imagine that the 
person who had made the above acknowledgment, a person too who is justly 
allowed by all who are acquainted with his writings, to possess uncommon 
penetration and philosophical abilities, that this were the same individual who 
had so short a while before affirmed, that ‘‘a miracle,” or a violation of the course 
+* nature, ‘‘supported by any human testimony, is more properly a subject of 
derision than of argument.” 

The objection ‘that successive testimony diminishes, and that so rapidly as i¢ 
command no assent after a few centuries at most,” deserves not so full a refuta 
tion, rince it is evident, that ‘ testimony “continues credible so long as it is 
transmitted with ail those circumstances and conditions which first procured it 
a certain degree of merit among men. Who complains of a decay of evidence in 
relation to the actions of Alexander, Hannibal, Pompey, or Cesar? We never 
hear persons wishing they had lived ages earlier, that they might have had bet- 
ter proof that Cyrus was the conquero: of Babylon; that Darius was beaten in 
several battles by Alexander,” &c. (See Dr. O. Greeory’s Letters on the Chris- 
tiar Revelation, vol. i, p. 196.) 


86 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


principles ; there needs no other proof of what he says, but that he 
said it, and there needs no more than to read the inspired books to be 
instructed.” 

Having thus shown, that miracles are possible; that under certain 
circumstances their reality may be ascertained; that when accompa. 
nied by other circumstances which we have also mentioned, they are 
connected with a definite end, and connect themselves with the Divine 
mission of those who perform them, and with the truth of their doctrine; 
that as facts they are the subjects of human testimony, and that credi. 
ble testimony respecting them lays a competent foundation for our 
belief in them, and in those revelations which they are clearly designed 
to attest,—the way is prepared for the consideration of the miracles 
recorded in Scripture. 

Proruecy is the other great branch of the external evidence of a 
revelation ; and the nature and force of that kind of evidence may fitly 
be pointed out before either the miracles or prophecies of the Bible are 
examined : for by ascertaining the general principles on which this kind 
of evidence rests, the consideration of particular cases will be rendered 
more easy and satisfactory. 

No argument a priori against the possibility of prophecy can he 
attempted by any one who believes in the existence and infinitely perfect 
nature of God. 

The infidel author of “The Moral Philosopher,” indeed, rather insi- 
nuates than attempts fully to establish a dilemma with which to perplex 
those who regard prophecy as one of the proofs of a Divine revela- 
tion. He thinks that either prophecy must respect “events necessary, 
as depending upon necessary causes, which might be certainly fore- 
known and predicted ;” or that, if human actions are free, and effects 
contingent, the possibility of prophecy must be given up, as it implies 
foreknowledge, which, if granted, would render them necessary. 

The first part of this objection would be allowed, were there no pre- 
dictions to be adduced in favour of a professed revelation, except such as 
related to events which human experience has taught to be dependent 
upon some cause, the existence and necessary operation of which are 
within the compass of human knowledge. ' But to foretell such events 
would not be to prophesy, any more than to say, that it will be light to- 
morrow at noon, or that on a certain day and hour next year there will 
occur an eclipse of the sun or moon, when that event has been pre. 
v ously ascertained by astronomical calculation. 

If, however, it were allowed, that all events depended upon a chain 
of necessary causes, yet, in a variety of instances, the argument from 
prophecy would not be at all affected; for the foretelling of necessary 
results in certain circumstances is beyond human intelligence, because 
they can only be known to Him by whose power those necessary 


FIRST, ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. F 87 


causes on which they depend have been arranged, and who has pre. 
scribed the times of their operation. To borrow a case, for the sake 
of illustration, from the Scriptures, though the claims of their predictions 
are not now in question ; let us allow that such a prophecy as that of 
[saiah respecting the taking of Babylon by Cyrus was uttered, as it 
purports to be, more than a century before Cyrus was born, and that all 
the actions of Cyrus and his army, and those of the Babylonian monarch 
and his people, were necessitated; is it to be maintained that the 
chain of necessitating causes running through more than a century 
could be traced by a human mind. so as to describe the precise manner 
in which that fatality would unfold itself, even to the turning of the 
river, the drunken carousal of the inhabitants, and the neglect of shut- 
ting the gates of the city? This, being by uniform and universal expe- 
rience known to be above all human apprehension, would therefore 
prove that the prediction was made in consequence of a communi- 
cation from a superior and Divine Intelligence. Were events therefore 
subjected to invincible fate and necessity, there might nevertheless be 
prophecy. 

The other branch of the dilemma is founded on the notion, that if we 
allow the moral freedom of human actions, prophecy is impossible, 
because certain foreknowledge is contrary to that freedom, and fixes 
and renders the event necessary. 

To this the reply is, that the objection is founded on a false assumption, 
the Divine foreknowledge having no more influence in effectuating, or 
making certain any event, than human foreknowledge in the degrée in 
which it may exist ; there being no moral causality at all in knowledge. 
This lies in the will, which is the determining, acting principle in every 
agent; or, as Dr. Samuel Clarke has expressed it in answer to another 
kind of objector, “God’s infallible judgment concerning contingent 
truths does no more alter the nature of the things and cause them to be 
necessary, than our judging right at any time concerning a contingent 
truth, makes it cease to be contingent ; or than our science of a present 
truth is any cause of its being either true or present. Here, therefore, 
ies the fallacy of our author’s argument. Because from God’s fore. 
knowing the existence of things depending upon a chain of necessary 
causes, it follows, that the existence of the things must needs be ne- 
cessary ; therefore from God’s judging infallibly concerning things 
which depend not on necessary but free causes, he concludes that these 
things also depend not upon free but necessary causes. Contrary, I say, 
to the supposition in the argument, for it must not be first supposed, that 
things are in their own nature necessary ; but from the power of judging 
infallibly concerning free events, it must be proved that things, otherwise 
supposed free, will thereby unavoidably become necessary.” ‘The whole 
question lies in this, Is the simple knowledge of an action a necessitating 


88 THE( LOGICAL INSTITUTES. LPART 


cause of the action? And the answer must be in the negative, as 
every man’s consciousness will assure him. If the causality of influence, 
either immediate, or by the arrangement of compelling events, be Luxed 
up with this, the ground is shifted ; and it is no longer a question which 
respects simple prescience. 

This metaphysical objection having nc foundation in truth. the force 
of the evidence arising from predictions of events, distant, and out of 
the power o* human sagacity to anticipate, and uttered as authentica- 
tions of a Divine commission, is apparent. “Such predictions, whether 
in the form of declaration, description, or representation of things fu- 
ture,” as Mr. Boyle justly observes, “ are supernatural things, and may 
properly be ranked among miracles.” (Boyue’s Christian Virtuoso.) 
For when, for instance, the events are distant many years or ages from 
the uttering of the prediction itself, depending on causes not so much 
as existing when the prophecy was spoken and recorded, and likewise 
upon various circumstances and a long arbitrary series of things, and the 
fluctuating uncertainties of human volitions, and especially when they 
lepend not at all upon any external circumstances, nor upon any cre- 
ated being, but arise merely from the counsels and appointment of God 
himself;—such events can be foreknown only by that Being, one of 
whose attributes is omniscience, and can be foretold by him only to 
‘whom the “Father of lights” shall reveal them: so that whoever is 
manifestly endued with that predictive power, must, in that instance, 
speak and act by Divine inspiration, and what he pronounces of that 
kind: must be received as the word of God, nothing more being neces- 
sary to assure us of this, than credible testimony that such predictions 
were uttered before the event, or conclusive. evidence that the records 
which contain them are of the antiquity to which they pretend. (Vide 
Cuapman’s Eusebius, p. 158; Cupwortu’s Intellect. Syst. p. 866; 
Virrinea in Isa. cap. 41.) 


CHAPTER X. 


THe EvipENCES NECESSARY TO AUTHENTICATE A REVELATION.—In. 
ternal Evidence.—Collateral Evidence. 


Tux second kind of evidence, usually considered as necessary fur 
the attestation of a Divine revelation, is called internal evidence. 

This kind of evidence has been already described to be that which 
arises from the consideration of the doctrines taught, as being consist- 
ent with the character of God, and tending to promote the virtue and 
happiness of man, the ends for which a revelation of the will of God 
was needed, and for which it must have been given, if it be considered 
as an act of grace and mercy. 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 89 


This subject, like the two branches of the external evidence, miracles 
and prophecy, involves important general principles ; and it may require 
to be the more carefully considered, as opinions have run into extremes. 
By some it has been doubted, whether what is called “ the internal evi- 
dence,” that is, the excellence of the doctrines and tendency of a reve- 
lation, ought to be ranked with the leading evidence of miracles and. 
prophecy, seeing that the proof from miracles and from prophecy is 
dacisive and absolute. For the same reason, however, prophecy might 
be excluded from the rank of leading evidence, inasmuch as miracles 
of themselves are, in their evidence, decisive and absolute. If, however, 
it were contended, that proofs from miracles, prophecy, and internal 
evidence, are jointly necessary to constitute sufficient proof of the truth 

if a revelation, there would be reason to dispute the position, under- 
standing by “ sufficient evidence” that degree of proof which would 
render it highly unreasonable, perverse, and culpable, in any one to 
reject the authority of the revelation. This evidence is afforded by 
miracles alone ; for if there be any force at all in the argument from 
“miracles, it goes io the full length of rational proof of a Divine attesta- 
tion, and that both to him who personally witnesses the performance of 
a real miracle, and to whom it is credibly testified; and nothing 
more is absolutely necessary to enforce a rational conviction. But if it 
should please the Divine Author of a revelation to superadd the farther 
evidence of prophecy, and also that of the obvious truth, and beneficial 
tendency, of many parts of this revelation, circumstances which must 
necessarily be often apparent, it ought not to be disregarded in the argu- 
ment in its favour, nor thought of trifling import; since though it may not 
be necessary to establish a rational and sufficient proof, it may have a 
secondary necessity, to arouse attention, to leave objectors more obvi- 
ously without excuse, and also to accommodate the revelation to that 
variety which exists in the mental constitutions of men, one mind being 
excited to attention, and disposed to conviction, more forcibly by one 
species of proof than by another. 

In strict propriety, therefore, miracles may be considered as the pri- 
mary evidence of the truth of a revelation, and every other species of 
proof as confirmatory. Prophecy and the internal evidence are leading 
evidences, but neither of them stand in the foremost place. The same 
abundance of proof we perceive in nature, for the demonstration of the 
being and attributes of God. Proofs of the existence of a First Cause, 
almighty and infinitely wise, more than what is logically sufficient, sur- 
round us every where; but who can doubt, that if half the instances of 
infinite power and wisdom which are seen in the material universe were 
annihilated there would not be sufficient evidence to demonstrate both 
these, as perfections of the Maker of the universe ? 

On the other hand, the proof drawn from the internal evidence by 


90 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


others has been placed first in order, and the force of the evidence from 
miracles and prophecy is by them made to depend upon the excellence 
of the doctrine which they are brought forward to confirm, and which 
ought first to be ascertained. Nothing, say they, is to be received as 
a revelation from God which does not contain doctrines worthy, of the 
Divine character, and tending to promote the good of mankind.—* A 
necessary mark of a religion coming from God is, that the duties it en 
joins are all such as are agreeable to our natural notions of God, and 
perfective of the nature, and conducive to the happiness of man.” (Dr. 
S, Cuarke.) 

Now, though it must be instantly granted, that in a revelation from 
God, there will be nothing contrary to his own character; and that, 
when it is made in the way of a merciful dispensation, it will contain 
nothing but what tends to perfect the nature, and promote the happi 
ness of his creatures ; it is clear, that to try a professed revelation by 
our own notions, as to what is worthy of God and beneficial to man-’ 
kind, is to assume, that, independent of a revelation, we know what God 
is, or we cannot say what is worthy or unworthy of him; and that we 
know, too, the character, and relations, and wants of man so perfectly 
as to determine what is beneficial to him; in other words, this sup- 
poses that we are in circumstances not greatly to need supernatural 
instruction. 

Another objection to the internal evidence being made the primary 
test of a revelation is, that it renders the external testimony nugatory, 
or comparatively unimportant. “Surely,” observes a late ingenious 
writer, “in a system which purports to be a revelation from heaven, 
and to contain a history of God’s dealings with men, and to develope 
truths with regard to the moral government of the universe, the 
knowledge and belief of which will lead to happiness here and here- 
after, we may expect to find (if its pretensions are well founded) an evi- 
dence for its truth, which shall be independent of all external testimony.” 
(Erskine on the Internal Evidence, &c.) If this be true, the utility 
of the evidence of miracles is rendered very questionable. It is either 
unnecessary, or it is subordinate and dependent; neither of which, by 
Christian divines at least, can be consistently maintained. The non. 
necessity of miracles cannot be asserted by them, because they believe 
them to have been actually performed ; and that they are subordinate © 
proofs, and dependent upon the sufficiency of the internal evidence, is 
contradicted by the whole tenor of the Scriptures, which represent them 
as being in themselves an absolute demonstration of the mission and 
doctrine of the prophets, at whose instance they were performed, and 
never direct us to regard their doctrines as a test of the miracles. The 
miracles of Christ, in particular, were a demonstration, not a partial 
and conditional, but a complete and absolute demonstration of his mis- 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 91 


sion from God; and “it may be observed, with respect to all the mira. 
eles of the New Testament, that their divinity, considered in themselves, 
1s always cither expressly asserted, or manifestly implied : and they are 
accordingly urged as a decisive and absolute proof of the divinity of the 
doctrine and testimony of those who perform them, without ever taking 
iato consideration the nature of the doctrine, or of the testimony ta be 
confirmed.” 

Against this mode of stating the internal evidence, there lies also this 
logical objection, that it is arguing in a circle ;—the miracles are proved 
by the doctrine, and then the doctrine by the miracles; an objection 
from which those who have adopted the notion either of the superior or 
the co-ordinate rank of the internal evidence, have not, with all their 
ingenuity and effort, fairly escaped. 

Miracles must, therefore, be considered as the leading and absolute 
evidence of a revelation from God ; and “ what toame,” says a sensible 
writer, “is, a priori, a strong argument of their being so, is the mani- 
fest inconsistency of the other hypotheses with the very condition of 
that people for whose sake God should raise up at any time his extra. 
ordinary messengers, endued with such miraculous powers. For if 
God ever favours mankind with such a special revelation of his will, 
and instructions from heaven, in a way supernatural, it is certainly in 
that unhappy juncture when the prizczples and practices of mankind 
are so miserably depraved and corrupted, as to want the light and assist- 
ance of revelation extremely, and are (humanly speaking) utterly incor- 
rigible without it. Now, to say that, in these particular circumstances, 
men are not to depend on any real miracles, but, before they admit 
them as evidence of the prophet’s Divine mission, they must carefully 
examine his doctrine, to see if it be perfectly good and true, is either to 
suppose these people furnished with principles and knowledge requisite 
for that purpose, contrary, point blank, to the real truth of their case ; 
or else it is to assert, that they who are utterly destitute of principles 
and knowledge requisite for that work, must, nevertheless, undertake it 
without them, and judge of the truth of the prophet’s doctrine and au- 
thority by their false principles of religion and morality ; which, in 
short, is to fix them immovably where they are already, in old errone- 
ous principles, against any new and true ones that should be offered. 
Especially with the bulk of mankind, full of darkness and prejudice, this 
must unavoidably be the consequence; and the more they wanted a 
reformation in principle, the less capable would they be of receiving it 
in this method. Thus, for instance: were a teacher sent from heaven, 
with signs and wonders, to a nation of idolaters, and they previously 
instructed to regard no miracles of his whatsoever, till they were fully 
satisfied of the goodness of his doctrine, it is easy to foresee by what 
rule they would prove his doctrine, and what success he would mvet 


92 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. (PART 


with among them. Add to this, what is likewise exceedingly material, 
the great delays and perplexities attending this way of proceeding. For 
if every article of doctrine must be discussed and scanned by every per- 
son to whom it is offered, what slow advances would be made by a Di. 
vine revelation among such a people! Hundreds would probably be 
cut off before they came to the end of their queries, and the prophet 
might grow decrepit with age, before he gained twenty proselytes in a 
nation.” (CHapman’s Eusebius.) 

It is easy to discover the causes which have led to these mistakes, as 
to the true office of the internal evidence of a Divine revelation. 

In the first place, a hypothetic case has been assumed, and it has 
been asked, “If a doctrine, absurd and wicked, should be attested by 
miracles, is it to be admitted as Divine, upon their authority?” The 
answer is, that this is a case which cannot in the nature of things occur, 
and cannot, therefare, be made the basis of an argument. We have 
seen already, that a real miracle can be wrought by none but God, or by 
his commission, because the contrary supposition would exclude him 
from the government of the world which he has made and preserves. 
Whenever a real miracle takes place, therefore, in attestation of any 
doctrine, that doctrine cannot be either unreasonable or impious; and if 
it should appear so to us, after the reality of the miracle is ascertained, 
which is not probable ordinarily, our judgment must be erroneous. 
The miracle proves the doctrine, or the ground on which miracles are 
allowed to have any force of evidence at all, either supreme or sub- 
ordinate, absolute or dependent, must be given up; for their evidence 
consists in this—that they are the works of God. 

The second cause of the error has been, that the rational evidence 
of the truths contained in a revelation has been confounded with the 
authenticating evidence. When once an exhibition of the character, 
‘plans, and laws of God is made, though in their nature totally undis- 
coverable, by human faculties, they carry to the reason of man, so far 
as they are of a nature to be comprehended by it, the demonstration 
which accompanies truth of any other kind. For as the eye is formed 
to receive light, the rational powers of man are formed to receive con- 
viction when the congriity of propositions is made evident. ‘This is 
rational, but it is not authenticating evidence. Let us suppose that there 
is no external testimony of miracles or prophecy vouchsafed to attesi 
that the teacher, through whom we receive those doctrines which appear 
to us so sublime, so important, so true, received them from God, witha 
mission to impart them to us. He himself has no means of knowing 
them to be from God, or of distinguishing them from some happy train 
of thought, into which his mind has been carried by its own force; nor 
if he had, have we any means of concluding that they are more than the 
opinions of a mind, superior in vigor and grasp to our own. They 


FIRST. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 93 


may be true, but they are not attested to be Divine. We have no 
guarantee of their infallible truth, because our own rational powers are 
not infallible, nor those of the most gifted human mind. Add then the 
external testimony, and we have the attestation required. The rational 
evidence of the doctrine is the same in both cases; but the rational 
evidence, though to us it is as far, and only as far, as we can claim 
infallibility for our judgment, the proof of the truth of the doctrine is 
ne proof at all that God has revealed it. In the external testimony alone 
that proof is found: the degree of rational evidence we have of the 
truth and excellency of the doctrine may be a farther commendation of 
it to us, but it is no part of its authority. 

From this distinction, the relative importance of the external and the 
internal evidence of a revelation may be farther illustrated. Rational 
evidence of the doctrines proposed to us, when it can be had, goes to 
establish their truth, so far as we can depend upon our judgment ; but 
the external testimony, if satisfactory, establishes their Divine authority, 
and therefore their absolute truth, and leaves us no appeal. Still far- 
ther, a revelation, dependent upon internal evidence only, could contain 
no doctrines, and enjoin no duties, but of which the evidence to our 
reason should be complete. The least objection grounded on a plausible 
contrary reason would weaken their force, and the absence of a clear 
perception of their congruity with some previous principles, admitted as 
true, would be the absence of all evidence of their truth whatever. On 
the other hand, a revelation, with rational proof of a Divine attestation, 
renders our instruction in many doctrines and duties possible, the rational 
evidence of whose truth is wanting ; and as some doctrines may be true, 
and highly important to us, which are not capable of this kind of proof, 
that is, which are not so fully known as to be compared with any 
received propositions, and determined by them, our knowledge is, in this 
way, greatly enlarged : the benefits of revelation are extended ; and the 
whole becomes obligatory, and therefore efficient to moral purposes, 
because it bears upon it the seal of an infallible authority. 

The firmer ground on which a revelation, founded upon reasonable 
external proof of authority, rests, is also obvious. The doctrines in 
which we need to be instructed are, the nature of God ; our own rela- 
tions to that invisible Being; his will concerning us; the means of 
obtaining or securing his favour; the principles of his government; and 
a future life. These, and others of a similar kind, involve great diffi- 
culties, as the history of moral knowledge among mankind sufficiently 
proves; and that, not only among those who never had the benefits of the 
Biblical revelation on these subjects, but among those who, not consider- 
ing it as an authority, have indulged the philosophizing spirit, and judged 
of these doctrines merely by their rational evidence. This, from the 
nature of things, appearing under different views to different minds, has 


94 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


produced almost as much contrariety of opinion among them, as we 
find among the sages of pagan antiquity. The mere rational proof of 
the truth of such doctrines being therefore, from its nature, in many im- 
portant respects obscure, and liable to diversity of opinion, would lay but 
a very precarious and shifting foundation for faith in any revelation from 
God suited to remove the ignorance of man on points so important in 
doctrine, and so essential to an efficient religion and morality. 

On the other hand, the process of obtaining a rational proof of the 
Divine attestation of a doctrine, by miracles for instance, is of the most 
simple and decisive kind, and gives to unbelief the character of obvious 
perverseness and inconsistency. Perverseness, because there is a clear 
opposition of the will rather than of the judgment in the case; incon- 
sistency, because a much lower degree of evidence is, by the very 
objectors, acted upon in their most important concerns in life. Fe: 
who that saw the dead raised to life, in an appeal to the Lord of life, in 
confirmation of a doctrine professing to be taught by his authority, but 
must, unless wilful perverseness interposed, acknowledge a Divine testi- 
mony ; and who that heard the fact reported on the testimony of honest 
men and competent observers, under circumstances in which no illusion 
can take place, but must be charged with inconsistency, should he treat 
the report with skepticism, when, upon the same kind and quantum of 
evidence, he would so credit any report as to his own affairs, as to risk 
the greatest interests upon it? In difficult doctrines, of a kind to give 
rise to a variety of opiiions, the rational evidence is accompanied with 
doubt ; in such a case as that of the miracle we have supposed, it rests 
on principles supported by the universal and constant experience of 
mankind :—1. That the raising of the dead is above human power : 
2. That men, unquestionably virtuous in every other respect, are not 
likely to propagate a deliberate falsehood : and 3. That it contradicts all 
the known motives to action in human nature, that they should do so, not 
only without advantage, but at the hazard of reproach, persecution, and 
death. The evidence of such an attestation is therefore as indubitable 
as these principles themselves. 

The fourth kind of evidence, by which a revelation from God may be 
confirmed, is the collateral; on which, at present, we need not say 
more than adduce some instances, merely to illustrate this kind of testi- 
mony. 

The collateral evidence of a revelation from God may be its 
agreement in principle with every former revelation, should previous 
revelations have been vouchsafed—that it was obviously suited to the 
circumstances of the world at the time of its communication—that it is 
adapted to effect the great moral ends which it purposes, and has actu- 
ally effected them—that if it contain a record of facts, as well as of 
doctrines, those historical facts agree with the credible traditions and 


¥IRST. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 95 


histories of the same times—that monuments, either natural or insti- 
tuted, remain to attest the truth of its history—that adversaries have 
made concessions in its favour—and that, should it profess to be a 
universal and ultimate revelation of the will and mercy of God to man, 
it maintains its adaptation to the case of the human race, and its 
efficiency, to the present day. These and many other circumstances 
may be ranked under the head of coilateral evidence, and some of them 
will, in their proper place, be applied to the Holy Scriptures. 


CHAPTER XI. 
The Use and Limitation of Reason in Religion. 


Havine pointed out the kind of evidence by which a revelation from 
God may be authenticated, and the circumstances under which it ought 
to produce conviction and enforce obedience, it appears to be a natural 
order of proceeding to consider the subject of the title of this chapter, 
inasmuch as evidence of this kind, and for this end, must be addressed 
to our reason, the only faculty which is capable of receiving it. But 
as to this office of our reason important limitations and rules must be 
assigned, it will be requisite to adduce and explain them. 

The present, argument being supposed to be with one who believes in 
a God, the Lord and Governor of man, and that he is a Being of infinite 
perfections, our observations will have the advantage of certain first 
principles which that belief concedes. 

We have already adduced much presumptive evidence, that a revela- 
tion of the will of God is essential to his moral government, and that 
such a revelation has actually been made. We have also farther con- 
sidered the kind and degree of evidence which is necessary to ratify it. 
The means by which a conviction of its truth is produced, is the point 
before us. 

The subject to be examined is the truth of a religious and moral 
system, professing to be from God, though communicated by men, who 
plead his authority for its promulgation. If there be any force in the 
preceding observations, we are not, in the first instance, to examine the 
doctrine, in order to determine from our own opinion of its excellence, 
whether it be from God, (for to this, if we need a revelation, we are 
incompetent, ) but we are to inquire into the credentials of the messengers, 
in qu-*: of sufficient proof that God hath spoken to mankind by them. 
Sisould a slight consideration of the doctrine, either by its apparent ex- 
ceilence or the contrary, attract us strongly to this examination, it is 
well: but whatever prejudices, for or against the doctrine, a report, or 
a hasty opinion of its nature and tendency may inspire, our final judg. 
ment can only safely rest upon the proof which may be afforded of its 


06 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


Divineauthority. Ifthat be satisfactory, the case is determined, whether 
the doctrine be pleasing or displeasing to us. _ If sufficient evidence be 
not afforded, we are at liberty to receive or reject the whole or any part 
of it as it may appear to us to be worthy of our regard; for it then 
stands on the same ground as any other merely human opinion. We 
are, however, to beware that this is done upon a very solemn re- 
sponsibility. 

The proof of the Divine authority of a system of doctrine communi. 
cated under such circumstances, is addressed to our reason, or in othcr 
words it must be reasonable proof that in this revelation there has been 
a direct and special interposition of God. 

On the principles therefore already laid down, that though the rational 
evidence of a doctrine lies in the doctrine itself, the rational proof of 
the Divine authority of a doctrine must be external to that doctrine ; and 
that miracles and prophecy are appropriate and satisfactory attestations 
of such an authority whenever they occur, the use of human reason in 
this inquiry is apparent. The alleged miracles themselves are to be 
examined, to determine whether they are real or pretended, allowing 
them to have been performed; the testimony of witnesses is to be in- 
vestigated, to determine whether they actually occurred; and if this 
testimony has been put on record, we have also to determine whether 
the record was at first faithfully made, and whether it has been carefully 
and uncorruptedly preserved. With respect to prophecy we are also to 
examine, whether the professed prophecy be a real prediction of future 
events, or only an ambiguous and equivocal saying, capable of being 
understood in various ways; whether it relates to events which lie 
beyond the guess of wise and observing men; whether it was uttered 
so long before the events predicted, that they could not be anticipated in 
the usual order of things ; whether it was publicly or privately uttered ; 
and whether, if put on record, that record has been faithfully kept. To 
these points must our consideration be directed, and to ascertain the 
strength of the proof is the important province of our reason or judgment. 

The second use of reason respects the interpretation of the revelation 
thus authenticated; and here the same rules are to be applied as in the 
interpretation of any other statement or record ; for as our only object, 
after the authenticity of the revelation is established, is to discover its 
sense, or in other words to ascertain what is declared unto us therein by 
God, our reason or judgment is called to precisely the same office as 
when the meaning of any other document is in question. The terms of 
the record are to be taken in their plain and commonly received sense ,— 
jigures of speech are to be interpreted with reference to the local pecult- 
arities of the country in which the agents who wrote the record resided ;— 
idioms are to be understood according to the genius of the language em- 
ployed ;—if any allegorical or mystical discourses occur, the hey to them 


FIRST. THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES 97 


must be sought in the bak itself, and not in our own fancies ;—-what is 
‘bscure must be interpreted by that which is plain ;—the scope and tenor 
of a discourse must be regarded, and no conclusinn formed on passages 
detached from their context, except they are complete in their sense, or 
evidently intended as axioms and apophthegms. ‘These and other rules, 
which respect the time and place when the record was written; the 
circumstances of the writer and of those to whom he immediately ad 
dressed himself; local customs, &c, appear in this, and all other cases, 
so just and reasonable as to commend themselves to every sober man : 
aad we rightly use our reason in the interpretation of a received revela 
tion, when we conduct our inquiries into its meaning, by those plain 
common-sense rules which are adopted by all mankind when the mean. 
ing of other writings is to be ascertained. 

It has been added, as a rule of interpretation, that when a revelation 
is sufficiently attested, and in consequence of that admitted, nothing is to 
be deduced from it which is contrary to reason. As this rule is liable 
to be greatly misunderstood, and has sometimes been pushed to injurious 
consequences, we shall consider it at some length; and point out the 
sense in which it may be safely admitted. 

Some persons, who advocate this principle of interpretation, appear to 
confound the reason of man, with the reason or nature of things, and the 
relations which subsist among them. ‘These however can be known 
fully to God alone; and to use the term reason in this sense, is the 
same as to use it in the sense of the reason of God,—to an equality with 
which human reason cannot aspire. It may be the reverse of Divine 
reason, or a faint radiation from it, but never can it be full and perfect 
as the reason of a mind of perfect knowledge. It is admitted that no- 
thing can be revealed by God, as truth, contradictory of his knowledge, 
and of the nature of things themselves; but it follows not from this, that 
nothing should be contained in that revelation contradictory of the limit- 
ed and often erring reason of man. (3) 

Another distinction necessary to be made in order to the right appli- 


(3) ‘It is the error of those who contend that all necessary truth is discoverable 
et demonstrable by reason, that they affirm of human reason in particular, what 
ws only true of reason in general, or of reason in the abstract. To say, that 
whatever is true, must be either discoverable or demonstrable by reason, can 
only be affirmed of an all-perfect reason ; and is therefore predicated of none but 
the Divine intellect. So that, unless it can be shown that human reason 1s the 
same, in degree, as well as in kind, with Divine reason; i. e. commensurate with 
it as to its powers, and equally incapable of error; the inference from reason in 
the abstract, to human reason, is manifestly inconclusive. Nothing more is necessary 
to show the fallacy of this mode of arguing, than to urge the indisputable truth, 
that God is wiser than man, and has endued man with only a portion of that 
faculty which he himself, and none other beside him, possesses in absolute per 
fection.” (Van Mixpert’s Sermons at Boyle’s Lecture.) 


Vor. I. 7 


98 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. PART 


cation of this rule is, that a doctrine which cannot be proved by our 
reason, is not on that account, contrary either to the nature of things, 
or even to reasonitself. This is sometimes lost sight of, and that which 
has no evidence from our reason is hastily presumed to be against it. 
Now rational investigation is a process by which we inquire into the 
truth or falsehood of any thing by comparing it with what we intuitively, 
or by experience, know to be true, or with that which we have formerly 
demonstrated to be so. “By reason,” says Cicero, “we are led from 
things apprehended and understood, to things not apprehended.” Ra- 
tional proof therefore consists in the agreement or disagreement of that 
which is compared with truths already supposed to beestablished. But 
there may be truths, the evidence of which can only be fully known to 
the Divine mind, and on which the reasoning or comparing faculty of 
an inferior nature cannot, frém their vastness or obscurity, be employed; 
and such truths there must be in any revelation which treats of the 
nature and perfections of God ; his will as to us,—and the relations we 
stand in to him, and to another state of being. As facts and doctrines. 
they are as much capable of revelation as if the whole reason of things 
on which they are grounded were put into the revelation also; but they 
may be revealed as authoritative declarations, of which the process of 
proof is hidden, either because it transcends our faculties, or for other 
reasons, and we have therefore no rational evidence of their truth farther 
than we have rational evidence that they come from God, which is in 
fact a more powerful demonstration. That a revelation may contain 
truths of this transcendent nature must be allowed by all who have 
admitted its necessity, if they would be consistent with themselves ; for 
its necessity rests, in great part, upon the weakness of human reason. 
If our natural faculties could have reached the truths thus exhibited to 
us, there had been no need of supernatural instruction ; and if it has 
been vouchsafed, the degree depends upon the Divine will, and he may 
give a doctrine with its reasons, or without them ; for surely the ground 
of our obligation to believe his word does not rest upon our perception 
of the rational evidence of the truths he requires us to believe. If doc- 
trines then be given without the reasons on which they rest, that is, 
without any apparent agreement with what is already known; because 
the process of proof must, in many cases, be a comparison of that which 
is too vast to be fully apprehended by us with something else which, 
because known by us, must be comparatively little, or perhaps in some 
of its qualities or relations of a different nature, so that no fit comparison 
of things so dissimilar can be instituted ; this circumstance proves the 
absence of rational evidence to us; but it by no means follows, that the 
doctrine is incapable of rational proof, though probably no reason but 
that of God, or of a more exalted being than man in his present state 
may be adequate to unfold it. | 


FIRST. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 99 


It has indeed been maintained, that though our reason may be inade. 
quate to the discovery of such truths as the kind of revelation we have 
supposed to be necessary must contain, yet, when aided by this revela- 
tion, it is raised into so perfect a condition, that what appears incongru- 
ous to it ought to be concluded contrary to the revelation itself. This 
to a certain extent, is true. When a doctrine is clearly revealed to us, 
ste nding as it does upon an infallible authority, no contrary doctrine can 
be true, whether found without the record of the revelation, or deduc 2d 
from it; for this is in fact no more than saying, that human opinions 
must be tried by Divine authority, and that revelation must be consistent 
with itself. The test to which in this case, however, we subject a con- 
tradictory doctrine, so long as we adhere to the revelation, is formed of 
principles which our reason did not furnish, but such as were communi- 
cated to us by supernatural interposition ; and the judge to which we 
refer is not, properly speaking, reason, but revelation. 

But if by this is meant, that our reason, once enlightened by the annun- 
ciation of the great truths of revelation, can discover or complete, in ali 
cases, the process of their rational proof, that is, their conformity to the 
nature and truth of *’..ags, and is thus authorized to reject whatever 
cannot be thus harmonized with our own deductions from the leading 
truths thus revealed, so great a concession cannot be made to human 
ability. In many of the rules of morals, and the doctrines of religicn 
too, it may be allowed, that a course of thought is opened which may 
be pursued to the enlargement of the rational evidence of the doctrines 
taught, but not as to what concerns many of the attributes of God; his 
purposes concerning the human race ; some of his most important pro- 
cedures toward us; and the future destiny of man. When once it is 
revealed that man is a creature, we cannot but perceive the reasonable. 
ness of our being governed by the law of our Creator; that this is 
founded in his right and our duty ; and that, when we are concerned 
with a wise, and gracious, and just Governor, what is our duty must of 
necessity be promotive of our happiness. But if the revelation should 
ecntain any declarations as to the nature of the Creator himself, as that 
he is eternal and self existent and in every place; and that he knows 
all things; the thoughts thus suggested, the doctrines thus stated, nakedly 
and authoritatively, are too mysterious to be distinctly apprehended by 
us, and we are unable, by comparing them with any thing else, (for we 
know nothing with which we can compare them,) to acquire any clear 
views of the manner in which such a being exists, or why such perfec- 
tions necessarily flow from his peculiar nature. If, therefore, the reve- 
lation itself does not state in addition to the mere facts that he is self 
existent, omnipresent, omniscient, &c, the manner in which the existence 
of such attributes harmonizes with the nature and reason of things, we 
cannot supply the chasm; and should we even catch some view of the 


100 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. | [PART 


rational evidence, which is not denied, we are unable to complete it; our 
reason is not enlightened up to the full measure of these truths, nor on 
such subjects are we quite certain that some of our most rational deduc. 
tions are perfectly sound, and we cannot, therefore, make use of them 
as standards by which to try any doctrine, beyond the degree in which 
they are clearly revealed, and authoritatively stated to us. Other 
examples might be given, but these are sufficient for illustration. 
These observations being made, it will be easy to assign definite limits 
to the rule, “ that no doctrine in an admitted revelation is to be under- 
stood in a sense contrary to reason.” ‘The only way in which such a 
rule can be safely received is, that nothing is to be taken as a true inter- 
pretation, when, as to the subject in question, we have sufficient know- 
ledge to affirm, that the interpretation is contrary to the nature of things, 
which, in this case, it is also necessary to be assured that we have been 
able to ascertain. Of some things we know the nature without a reve- 
lation, inasmuch as they lie within the range of our own observation and 
experience, as that a human body cannot be in two places at the same 
time. Of other things we know the nature by revelation, and by that 
our knowledge is enlarged. If, therefore, fiv... ome figurative passages 
of a revelation, any person, as the papists, should affirm, that wine is 
human blood, or that a human body can be in two places at the same 
time, it is contrary to our reason, that is, not to mere opinion, but to the 
nature of something which we know so well, that we are bound to reject 
the interpretation as an absurdity. If, again, any were to interpret 
passages which speak of God as having the form of man to mean, that 
he has merely a local presence, our reason has been taught by revela- 
tion, that God is a spirit, and exists every where, that is, so far we have 
been taught the nature of things as to God, that we reject the interpre- 
tation, as contrary to what has been so clearly revealed, and resolve 
every anthropomorphite expression we may find in the revelation into 
figurative and accommodated language. In the application of this rule, 
when even thus limited, care is, however, to be taken, that we distin. 
guish what is capable of being tried by it. If we compare one thing 
with another, in order to determine whether it agrees with, or differs 
from it, it is not enough that we have sufficient knowledge of that 
with which we compare it, and which we have made the standerd of 
judgment. It is also necessary that the things compared should be 9f 
the same nature ; and that the comparison should be made in the same 
espects. We take for illustration the case just given. Of two bodies 
ve can affirm, that they cannot be in the same place at the same time ; 
out we cannot affirm that of a body and a spirit, for we know what 
relation bodies have to place and to each other, but we do not know 
what relation spirits have to each other, or to space. This may illustrate 
the first rule. The second demands, that the comparison be made in 


FIRST. j THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 101 


the same respect. If we affirm of two bodies, one of a round, and the 
other of a square figure, that their figure is the same, the comparison 
determines the case, and at once detects the error ; but of these bodies, 
so different in figure, it may be affirmed without contradiction, that they 
are of the same specific gravity, for the difference of figure is not that 
in respect of which the comparison is made. We apply this to the inter- 
pretation of a revelation of God and his will. The rule which requires 
us to rejert as a true interpretation of that revelation, whatever is con- 
trary to reason, may be admitted in all cases where we know the rea. 
nature of things, and conduct the comparison with the cautions just 
given ; but it would be most delusive, and would counteract the intention 
of the revelation itself, by unsettling its authority, if it were applied in 
any other way. For, 

1. In all cases where the nature of things is not clearly and satis- 
factorily known, it cannot be affirmed that a doctrine contradicts them, 
and is therefore contrary to reason. 

2. When that of which we would form a rational judgment is not 
itself distinctly apprehended, it cannot be satisfactorily compared with 
those things, the nature of which we adequately know, and therefore 
cannot be said to be contrary to reason. 

Now in such a revelation as we have supposed necessary for man, 
there are many facts and doctrines which are not capable of being com. 
pared with any thing we adequately know, and they therefore lie wholly 
without the range of the rule in question. We suppose it to declare 
what God; the infinite First Cause, is. But it is of the nature of such a 
being to be, in many respects, peculiar to himself, and, as in those 
respects he cannot admit of comparison with any other, what may be 
false, if affirmed of ourselves, because contradictory to what we know 
of human nature, may be true of him, to whom the nature of things 1s 
his own nature, and his own nature alone. The same observation may 
be made as to many of his natural attributes ; they are the attributes of 
a peculiar nature, and are therefore peculiar to themselves, either in 
kind or in degree; they admit of no comparison, each being like HIMSELF, 
sui generis: and the nature of things, as to them respectively, is their 
own nature. Thesame reasoning may, in part, be applied to the general 
purposes of God, in making and governing his creatures. They are 
not, in every respect, capable of being compared to any thing we ade- 
quately know, in order to determine their reasonableness. Creatures 
do not stand to each other in all the relations in which they stand to 
him, and no reasoning from their mutual relations can assist us in judg- 
ing of the plans he has formed with respect to the whole, with the extent 
of which, indeed, we are unacquainted, or often of a part, whose rela- 
tions to the whole we know not. Were we to subject what he has 
commanded us to do, or to leave undone, to the test of reasorableness, 


102 THELUVLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


we should often be at a loss how to commence the inquiry, for it may 
have a reason arising out of his own nature, which we either know not 
at all, or only in the partial and authoritative revelations he has made 
of himself; or out of his general plans, of which we are not judges, for 
the reasons just given; or its reason may lie in our own nature, which 
we know but partially, because we find it differently operated upon ny 
circumstances, and cannot know in what circumstances we may at any 
future time be placed. 

With respect to the moral perfections of God, as they are more capa. 
ble of a complete comparison with what we find in intelligent creatures, 
the notion of infinity being applicable to them in a different sense to that 
in which it is applied to his natural attributes, and adequate ideas of 
Justice and mercy and goodness being within our reach, this rule is much 
more applicable in all cases which would involve interpretations con- 
sistent with or opposed to these ideas; and any deduction clearly con- 
trary to them is to be rejected, as grounded not upon the revelation but 
a false interpretation. This will be the more confirmed, if we find any 
thing in the revelation itself in the form of an appeal to our own ideas 
of moral subjects, as for instance of justice and equity, in justification 
of the Divine proceedings ; for then we have the authority of the Giver 
of the revelation himself for attaching such ideas to his justice and 
equity as are implied in the same terms in the language of men. (4) 
A doctrine which would impugn these attributes, is not therefore to be 
deduced from such a revelation ; but here the rule can only be applied 
to such cases as we fully comprehend. There may be an apparent 
injustice in a case, which, if we knew the whole of it, would be found 
to harmonize with the strictest equity ; and what evidence of conformity 
to the moral attributes of God it now wants may be manifested in a 
future state, either by superior information then vouchsafed to us, or, 
when the subject of the proceeding is an immortal being, by the different 
circumstances of compensation in which he may be placed. 

Upon the whole then it will appear, that this rule of interpreting a reve- 
lation is necessarily but of limited application, and chiefly respects those 
parts of the record in which obscure passages and figurative language 
may occur. In most others, a revelation, if comprehensive, will be 
found its own interpreter by bringing every doubtful case to be deter. 
mined by its own unquestionable general principles, and explicii decla. 
rations. The use of reason, therefore, in matters of revelation, is to 
investigate the evidences on which it is founded, and fairly and impar. 
tially to interpret it according to the ordinary rules of interpretation in 


(4) Thus in the Scriptures we find numerous appeals of this kind: “ Judge 
between me and my vineyard.” ‘Are not my wavs equal?” ‘Shall not the 
Judge of the whole earth do right?” All of which passages suppose that equity 
and justice in God accord with the ideas attached to the same terns among men. 


FIRST. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 103 


other cases. Its Limir is the authority of God. When he has expli. 
citly laid down a doctrine, that doctrine is to be humbly received, what. 
ever degree of rational evidence may be afforded of its truth, or with. 
_ held; and no torturing or perverting criticisms can be innocently resorted 
to, to bring a doctrine into a better accordance with our favourite views 
and systems, any more than to make a precept bend to the love and 
practic e of our vicious indulgences. A larger scope than this cannot cer- 
tuinly be assigned to human reason in matters of revelation, when it is 
elevated to the office of a judge—a judge of the evidences on which a 
professed revelation rests, and a judge of its meaning after the applica- 
tion of the established rules of interpretation in other cases. (5) Butif 
reason be considered as a learner, it may have a much wider range in 
those fields of intelligence which a genuine revelation from God will 
open to ourview. All truth, even that which to us is most abstruse and 
mysterious, is capable of rational demonstration, though not to the rea- 
son of man, in the present state, and in some cases probably to no reason 
below that of the Divine nature. Truth is founded in reality, and for 
that reason is truth. Some truths therefore, which a revelation only 
could make known, will often appear to us rational, because consistent 
with what we already know. Meditation upon them, or experience of 
their reality in new circumstances in which we may be placed, may 
enlarge that evidence; and thus our views of the conformity of many 
of the doctrines revealed, with the nature and reality of things, may 
acquire a growing clearness and distinctness. The observations of 
others also may, by reading and converse, be added to our own, and 
often serve to carry out our minds into some new and richer vein of 
thought. Thus it is that reason, instead of being fettered, as some 
pretend, by being regulated, is enlightened by revelation, and enabled 
from the first principles, and by the grand landmarks which it fur- 
nishes, to pursue its inquiries into many subjects to an extent which 
enriches and ennobles the human intellect, and administers continual 
food to the strength of religious principle. This, however, is not the 
ease with all subjects. Many, as we have already seen, are froin 
their very nature wholly incapable of investigation. At the first step 
we launch into darkness, and find in religion as well asin natural philoso- 
phy, beyond certain limits, insurmountable barriers, which bid defiance 
to human penetration ; and even where the rational evidence of a truth 
but nzkedly stated in revelation, or very partially developed, can by human 
powers be extended, that circumstance gives us no qualification to judge 
of the truth of another doctrine which is stated on the mere authority of 
the dispenser of the revelation, and of which there is no evidence at all 
to our reason. It may belong to subjects of another and a higher class ; 


(5) See note A at the end of this chapter, in which two common objections are 
answered. 


104 THFOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


and if it be found in the Record, is not ‘v be explained away by principles 
which we may have drawn from other truths, though revealed, for those 
inferences have no higher an authority than the strength of our own 
fallible powers, and consequently cannot be put in competition with the 
declarations of an infallible teacher, ascertained by just rules of gram- 
nyatical and literary interpretation. 


Nore A.—Page 103, 


‘‘ In whatever point of view,” says an able living author, ‘“ the subject be placed, 
the same arguments which show the incapability of man, by the light of nature, 
to discover religious truth, will serve likewise to show, that, when it is revealed 
to him, he is not warranted in judging of it merely by the notions which he 
had previously formed. For is it not a solecism to affirm, that man’s natural 
reason is a fit standard for measuring the wisdom or truth of those things with 
which it is wholly unacquainted, except so far as they have been supernaturally 
revealed ?” 

«‘ But what, then,” (an objector will say,) “is the province of reason? Is it 
altogether useless? Or are we to be precluded from using it in this most import- 
ant of all concerns, for our security against error ?” 

Our answer is, that we do not lessen either the utility or the dignity of human 
reason, by thus confining the exercise of it within those natural boundaries which 
the Creator himself hath assigned to it. We admit, with the Deist, that ‘‘ reasor 
is the foundation of all certitude :’ and we admit, therefore, that it is fully com 
petent to judge of the credibility of any thing which is proposed to it as a Divine 
revelation. But we deny that it has a right to dispute (because we maintain that 
it has not the ability to disprove) the wisdom or the truth of those things which 
revelation proposes to its acceptance. Reason is to judge whether those things 
be indeed so revealed: and this judgment it is to form, from the evidence to that 
effect. In this respect it is ‘the foundation of certitude,” because it enables us 
to ascertain the fact, that God hath spoken to us. But this fact once established, 
the credibility, nay, the certainty of the things revealed, follows as of necessary 
consequence; since no deduction of reason can be more indubitable than this, 
that whatever God reveals must be true. Here, then, the authority of reason 
ceases. Its judgment is finally determined by the fact of the revelation itself: 
and it has thenceforth nothing to do, but to believe and to obey. 

‘* But are we to believe every doctrine, however incomprehensible, however 
mysterious, nay, however seemingly contradictory to sense and reason ?” 

We answer, that revelation is supposed to treat of subjects with which man’s 
natural reason is not conversant. It is therefore to be expected, that it should 
communicate some truths not to bs fully comprehended by human understandings. 
But these we may safely receive, upon the authority which declares them, without 
danger of violating truth. Real and evident contradictions, no man can, indeed, 
believe, whose intellects are sound and clear. But such contradictions are no 
more ~-:iposed or our belief, than impossibilities are enjoined for our practice; 
though things difficult to understand, as well as things hard to perform, may 
perhaps be required of us, for the trial of our faith and resolution. Seeming con. 
tradictions may also occur: but these may seem to be such because they are 
slightly or superficially considered, or because they are judged of by principles 
inapplicable to the subject, and without so clear a knowlege of the nature of tha 


FIRST.} THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 105 


things revealed, as may lead us to form an adequate conception of them. These, 

however, afford no solid argument against the truth of what is proposed to our® 
helief: since, unless we had really such an insight into the mysterious parts of 

revelation as might enable us to prove them to be contradictory and false, we 

have no good ground for rejecting them; and we only betray our own ignorance 

and perverseness in refusing to take God’s word for the truth of things which 

Pass man’s understanding. 

The simple question, indeed, to be considered, is, whether it be reasonable to 
believe, upon competent authority, things which we can neither discover our- 
selves, nor, when discovered, fully and clearly comprehend? Now every person 
of common observation must be aware, that unless he be content to receive solely 
upon the testimony of others a great variety of information, much of which he 
may be wholly unable to account for or explain, he could scarcely obtain a com. 
petency of knowledge to carry him safely through the common concerns of life. 
And with respect to scientific truths, the greatest masters in philosophy know 
full well that many things are reasonably to be believed, nay, must be believed on 
sure and certain grounds of conviction, though they are absolutely incompre 
hensible by our understandings, and even so difficult to be reconciled with other 
truths of equal certainty, as to carry the appearance of being contradictory and 
impossible. This will serve to show, that it is not contrary to reason to believe, 
on sufficient authority, some things which cannot be comprehended, and some 
things which, from the narrow and circumscribed views we are able to take of 
them, appear to be repugnant to our notions of truth. The ground on which we 
believe such things, is the strength and certainty of the evidence with which 
they are accompanied. And this is precisely the ground on which we are re- 
quired to believe the truths of revealed religion. The evidence that they come 
jfrom God, is, to reason itself, as incontrovertible a proof that they are true, as in 
matters of human science would be the evidence of sense, or of mathematical 
demonstration. 


CHAPTER XiIl 


ANTIQUITY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 


From the preparatory course of argument and observation which has 
been hitherto pursued, we proceed to the investigation of the question, 
whether there are sufficient reasons to conclude that such a revelation 
of truth, as we have seen to be so necessary for the instruction and 
moral correction of mankind, is to be found in the Scriptures of the Old 
and New Testaments; a question of the utmost importance, inasmuch 
as, if not found there, there are the most cogent reasons for concluding, 
that a revelation was never vouchsafed to man, or that it is irretrievably 
lost. 

No person living in an enlightened country will for a moment con- 
tend, that the Koran of Mohammed, or any of the reputed sacred 
writings of the Chinese, Hindoos, or Budhists, can be put into competi- 
tiou with the Bible; so that it is universally acknowledged among us, 
that there is but one book in the world which has claims to Divine 


106 YHEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. "PART 


authority so presumptively substantial as to be worthy of serious exami- 

“‘nation,—and therefore if the advantage of supernatural and infallible 
instruction has been afforded to man, it may be concluded to be found 
in that alone. This consideration indicates the proper temper of mind 
with which such an inquiry ought to be approached. 

Instead of wishing to discover that the claims of the Scriptures to 
Divine authority are unfounded, (the case it is to be feared with too 
many,) evary humble and sincere man, who, conscious of his own men- 
tal infirmity, and recollecting the perplexities in which the wisest of 
men have been involved on religious and moral subjects, will wish to 
find at length an infallible guide, and will examine the evidences of the 
Bible with an anxious desire that he may find sufficient reason to ac- 
knowledge their Divine authority ; and he will feel, that, should he be 
disappointed, he has met with a painful misfortune, and not a matter for 
triumph. If this temper of mind, which is perfectly consistent with full, 
and even severe examination of the claims of Scripture, does not exist, 
the person destitute of itis neither a sincere nor an earnest inquirer after 
truth. 

We may go farther and say, though we have no wish to prejudge the 
argument, that if the person examining the Holy Scriptures in order to 
ascertain the truth of their pretensions to Divine authority, has had the 
means of only a general acquaintance with their contents, he ought, if a 
lover of virtue as well as truth, to be predisposed in their favour; and 
that, if he is not, the moral state of his heart is liable to great suspicion. 
For that the theological system of the Scriptures is in favour of the 
highest virtues, cannot be denied. It both prescribes them, and affords 
the strongest possible motives to their cultivation. Love to God, and to 
all mankind ; meekness, courtesy, charity ; the government of the appe- 
tites and affections within the rules of temperance; the renunciation of 
evil imaginations, and sins of the heart ; exact justice in all our deal- 
ings ;—these, and indeed every other virtue, civil, social, domestic, and 
personal, are clearly taught, and solemnly commanded : and it might be 
confidently put to every candid person, however skeptical, whether the 
universal observance of the morality of the Scriptures, by all ranks and 
nations, would not produce the most beneficial changes in society, and 
secure universal peace, friendship, and happiness. ‘This he would not 
deny ; this has been acknowledged by some infidel writers themselves , 
and if so,—if after all the bewildering speculations of the wisest men on 
religious and moral subjects, and which, as we have seen, led to nothing 
definite and influential, a book is presented to us which shows what virtue 
is, and the means of attaining it; which enforces it by sufficient sanc- 
tions, and points every individual and every community to a certain 
remedy for all their vices, disorders, and miseries ;—-we must renounce 
all title to be considered lovers of virtue and lovers of our species, if we 


FIRST. THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 107 


do not feel ourselves interested in the establishment of its claims to 
Divine authoritv ; and because we love virtue, we shall wish that the 
proof of this important point may be found satisfactory. This surely 
-8 the temper of mind we ought to bring to such an inquiry; and the 
rejection of the Scriptures by those who are not under its influence, 
is rather a presumption in their favour than a consideration v hich 
throws upon them the least discredit. 

In addition to the proofs which have been given of the necessity ot 
a revelation, both from the reason of things, and the actual circum- 
stances of the world, it has been established, that miracles actually per 
formed, and prophecies really uttered and clearly accomplished, are 
satisfactory proofs of the authority of a communication of the will of 
God through the agency of men. We have however stated, that in 
cases where we are not witnesses of the miracles, and auditors of the 
predictions, but obtain information respecting them from some record, 
we must, before we can admit the force of the argument drawn from 
them, be assured, that the record was early and faithfully made, and has 
been uncorruptly kept, with respect to the miracles; and, with respect 
to the prophecies, that they were also uttered and recorded previously 
to those events occurring which are alleged to be accomplishments of 
them. These are points necessary to be ascertained before it is worth 
the trouble to inquire, whether the alleged miracles have any claim to 
be considered as miraculous in a proper sense, and the predictions as 
revelations from an omniscient, and, consequently, a Divine Being. 

The first step in this inquiry is, to ascertain the existence, age, and 
actions, of the leading persons mentioned in Scripture as the instruments 
by whom it is professed the revelations they contain were made known. 

With respect to these pERsons it is not necessary that our attention 
should be directed to more than two, Moses and Curist,—one the 
reputed agent of the Mosaic, the other the author of the Christian 
revelation ; because the evidence which establishes their existence and 
uctions, and the period of both, will also establish all that is stated in 
the same records as to the subordinate and succeeding agents. 

The Biblical record states, that Moses was the leader and legislator 
of the nation of the Jews near sixteen hundred years before the Chris- 
tian era, according to the common chronology. This is grounded upon 
«he tradition and national history of the Jews; and it is certain, that so 
far from there being any reason to doubt the fact, much less to suppose, 
with an extravagant fancy of some modern infidels, that Moses was a 
mythological personage, the very same principles of historical evidence 
which assure us of the truth of any unquestioned fact of profane history, 
assure us of the truth of this. It cannot be doubted but that the Jews 
existed very anciently as a nation. It is equally certain, that it has 
been an uninterrupted and universally received tradition among them 


— . 


HOS THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. JPART 


in all ages, that Moses led them out of Egypt, and first gave them their 
system of laws and religion. The history of that event they have in 
writing, and also the laws attributed to him. There is nothing in the 
leading events of their history contradicted by remaining authentic 
historical records of those nations with whom they were geographi. 
cally and politically related, to support any suspicion of its accuracy ° 
and as their institutions must have been established and enjoined by 
some political authority, and bear the marks of a systematic arrange 
ment, established at once, and not growing up under the operation of 
circumstances at distant periods, to one superior and commanding mind 
they are most reasonably to be attributed. The Jews refer them to 
Moses, and if this be denied, no proof can be offered in favour of any 
other person being entitled to that honour. The history is therefore 
uncontradicted by any opposing évidence, and can only be denied on 
some principle of skepticism which would equally shake the founda 
tions of all history whatever. ; 
The same observations may be made as to the existence of the 
Founder of the Christian religion. In the records of the New Testa- 
ment he is called Jesus Curis, because he professed to be the Messias 
predicted in the Jewish Scriptures, and was acknowledged as such by 
his followers ; and his birth is fixed upward of eighteen centuries ago. 
This also is at least uncontradicted testimony. The Christian religion 
exists, and must have had an author. Like the institutions of Moses, 
it bears the evidence of being the work of one mind; and, as a theolo- 
gical system, presents no indications of a gradual and successive ela- 
boration. ‘There was a time when there was no such religion as that 
of Christianity, and when pagan idolatry and Judaism universally pre- 
vailed ; it follows, that there once flourished a teacher to whom it owed 
its origin, and all tradition and history unite in their testimony, that 
that lawgiver was Jesus Christ. No other person has ever been ad- 
duced, living at a later period, as the founder of this form of religion. 
To the existence, and the respective antiquity ascribed in the Scrip. 
tures to the founders of the Jewish and Christian religion, many ancient 
writers give ample testimony; who being themselves neither of the 
Jewish nor Christian religion, cannot be suspected of having any de- 
sign to furnish evidence of the truth of either. Manreruo, CHErEMON, 
APoLLontivus, and Lxstmacuus, beside some other ancient Egyptians, 
whose histories are now lost, are quoted by Josephus, as extant in his 
days; and passages are collected from them, in which they agree that 
Moses was the leader of the Jews when they departed from Egypt, and 
the founder of their laws. Srraso, who flourished in the century be. 
fore Christ, (Geog. |. 16,) gives an account of the law of Moses, as 
forbidding images, and limiting Divine worship to one invisible and 
universal Being. Justin, a Romin historian, in his 36th book devotes 


FIRST. } THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES 109 


a chapter to an‘account of the origin of the Jews; represents them as 
sprung from ten sons of Israel, and speaks of Moses as the commander 
of the Jews who went out of Egypt, of the institution of the Sabbath, 
and the priesthood of Aaron. Purny speaks of Moses as giving rise 
to a sect of Magicians, probably with reference to his contest with the 
magicians of Egypt. Tacrrus says, “ Moses gave a new form of wor. 
ship to the Jews, and a system of religious ceremonies, the reverse of 
every thing known to any other age or country.” JuvENAL, in his 
14th Satire, mentions Moses as the author of a volume, which was 
preserved with great care among the Jews, by which the worship of 
images and eating swine’s flesh were forbidden ; and circumcision and 
the observation of the Sabbath strictly enjoined. Lonernus cites 
Moses as the lawgiver of the Jews, and praises the sublimity of his 
style in the account he gives of the creation. ‘The Orpuic verses 
which are very ancient, inculcate the worship of one God, as recom 
mended by that law “ which was given by him who was drawn out of 
the water, and received two tables of stone from the hand of God.”— 
(Eus. Prep. Ev. |. 13, c. xii.) Droporus Sicuus, in his first book, 
when he treats of those who consider the gods to be the authors ot 
their laws, adds, “ Among the Jews was Moses, who called God by the 
name of Taw, Iao,’ meaning Jehovah. Justin Marryr expressl:: 
says, that most of the historians, poets, luwgivers, and philosophers 
of the Greeks, mention Moses as the leader and prince of the Jewish 
nation. From all these testimonies, and many more were it necessary 
might be adduced, it is clear that it was as commonly received among 
ancient nations, as among the Jews themselves, that Moses was the 
founder and lawgiver of the Jewish state. 

As to Crist, it is only necessary to give the testimony of two his. 
torians, whose antiquity no one ever thought of disputing. Surronrus 
inéntions him by name, and says, that Claudius expelled from Rome 
those who adhered to his cause. (6) ‘Tacrrus records the progress 
which the Christian religion had made; the violent death its founder 
had suffered; that he flourished under the reign of Tiberius; that Pi- 
late was then procurator of Judea ; and that the original author of this 
profession was Christ. (7) Thus, not only the real existence of the 
founder of Christianity, but the period in which he lived is exactly ascer. 
tained from writings, the genuineness of which has never been doubted 

The antrqurry or THE Books which contain the history, the doc. 
trines, and the laws, of the Jewish and the Christian lawgivers, is next 
to be considered, and the evidence is not less satisfactory. The im- 


(6) Judwos impulsore Christo assidue tumultuantes Roma expulit. (Suet. Edit 
Var. p. 544.) 

(7) Auctor nominis ejus Christus, qui Tiberio imperitante, per procuratorem 
Pontium Pilatum supplicio affectus erat. (Annal. 1. 5.) 


‘WC THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


portance of this fact in the argument is obvious. I* the writings in 
question were made at, or very near, the time in which the miraculous 
acts recorded in them were performed, then the evidence of those 
events having occurred is rendered the stronger, for they were written 
at the time when many were still living who might heve contradicted 
the narration if false; and the improbability is also greater, that, in 
the verv age and place when and where those events are said to have 
Leen performed, any writer would have dared to run the hazard of 
prompt, certain, and disgraceful detection. It is equally important in 
the evidence of prophecy; for if the predictions were recorded long 
before the events which accomplished them took place, then the only 
question which remains is, whether the accomplishment is satisfac- 
tory ; for then the evidence becomes irresistible. 

With respect to the Scriptures of the Old Testament, the language 
in which they are written is a strong proof of their antiquity. The 
Hebrew ceased to be spoken as a living language soon after the Ba- 
bylonish captivity, and the learned agree that there was no grammar 
made for the Hebrew till many ages after. The difficulty of a forgery, 
at any period after the time of that captivity, is therefore apparent. 
Of these books too there was a Greek translation made about two 
hundred and eighty-seven years before the Christian era, and laid up 
in the Alexandrian library. 

Josephus gives a catalogue of the sacred books among the Jews, in 
which he expressly mentions the five books of Moses, thirteen of the 
Prophets, four of Hymns and Moral Precepts; and if, as many critics 
maintain, Ruth was added to Judges, and the Lamentations of Jere- 
miah to his Prophecies, the number agrees with those of the Old Tes- 
tament as it is received at the present day. 

The Samaritans, who separated from the Jews many hundred years 
before the birth of Christ, have in their language a Pentateuch, in the 
main exactly agreeing with the Hebrew ; and the pagan writers before 
cited, with many others, speak of Moses not only asa lawgiver and a 
prince, but as the author of books esteemed sacred by the Jews. (8) 

If the writings of Moses then are not genuine, the forgery must 
have taken place at a very early period; but a few considerations 
will show, that at any time this was impossible. 

These books could never have been surreptitiously put forth in the 
name of Moses, as the argument of Lestie most fully proves :—“ It is 
impossible that those books should have been received as his, if not 
written by him, because they speak of themselves as delivered by Mo. 
ses, and kept in the ark from his time: ‘And it came to pass when 
Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book until 


(8) See note A at the end of this chapter, for a larger proof of the above 
particulars 


FIRST.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 1J1 


they were finished, that Moses commanded the Levites who bore the 
ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying, Take the book of the law, and 
put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that 
it may be there for a witness against thee,’ Deut. xxxi, 24-26. A copy 
of this book was also to be left with the king; ‘And it shall be, when 
he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom that he shall write him a copy 
of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites ; 
and it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his 
life,’ &c, Deut. xviii, 18. This book of the law thus speaks of itself, 
not only as a history or relation of what things were done, but as the 
standing and municipal law and statutes of the nation of the Jews, bind- 
ing the king as well as the people. Now in whatever age after Moses 
this book may be supposed to have been forged, it was impossible that 
it could be received as truth, because it was not then to be found (as it 
professed to be) either in the ark or with the king, or any where else ; 
for when first invented, every body must know that they had never 
heard of it before. 

“ Could any man, now at this day, invent a book of statutes or acts 
of parliament for England, and make it pass upon the nation as the only 
book of statutes that ever they had known? As impossible was it for 
the books of Moses (if they were invented in any age after Moses) to 
have been received for what they declare themselves to be, viz. the sta- 
tutes and municipal law of the nation of the Jews: and to have per- 
suaded the Jews, that they had owned and acknowledged these books, 
all along from the days of Moses, to that day in which they were first 
invented ; that is, that they had owned them before they had ever so 
much as heard of them. Nay, more, the whole nation must, in an in- 
stant, forget their former laws and government, if they could receive 
these books as being their former laws. And they could not otherwise 
receive them, because they vouched themselves so to be. Let me ask | 
the Deists but one short question : Was there ever a book of sham laws, 
which were not the laws of the nation, palmed upon any people, since 
the world began? Ifnot, with what face can they say this of the book 
of laws of the Jews? Why will they say that of them which they 
confess impossible in any nation, or among any people? 

« But they must be yet more unreasonable. For the books of Moses have 
a farther demonstration of their truth than even other law books have ; 
fur they not only contain the laws, but give a historical account of their 
institution, and the practice of them from that time: as of the passover, 
in memory of the death of the first born in Egypt, Num. vii, 17, 18: 
and that the same day, all the first born of Israel, both of man and 
beast, were, by u perpetual law, dedicated to God : and the Levites taken 
for all the first born of the children of Israel. That Aaron’s rod, 
which budded, was kept in the ark, in memory of the rebellion, and 


112 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


wonderful destruction of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram ; and for the con- 
hrmation of the priesthood to the tribe of Levi. As likewise the pot of 
anna, in memory of their having been fed with it forty years in the 
wilderness. ‘That the brazen serpent was kept (which remained to the 
days of Hezekiah, 2 Kings xviii, 4,) in memory of that wonderful 
deliverance, by only looking upon it, from the biting of the fiery serpents, 
Numbers xxi, 9. The feast of pentecost, in memory of the dreadful 
appearance of God upon Mount Horeb, &c. 

“ And beside these remembrances of particular actions and occur- 
rences, there were other solemn institutions in memory of their deliver- 
ance out of Egypt, in the general, which included all the particulars. 
As of the Sabbath, Deut.v,15. Their daily sacrifices and yearly expia- 
tion; their new moons, and several feasts and fasts. So that there 
were yearly, monthly, weekly, daily remembrances and recognitions of 
these things. 

« And not only so, but the books of the same Moses tell us, that a par- 
ticular tribe (of Levi) was appointed and consecrated by God as his 
priests; by whose hands, and none other, the sacrifices of the people 
were to be offered, and these solemn institutions to be celebrated. 
That it was death for any other to approach the altar. That their high 
priest wore a glorious mitre, and magnificent robes of God’s own con- 
trivance, with the miraculous Urim and Thummim in his breastplate, 
whence the Divine responses were given, Num. xxvii, 21. That at his 
word the king and all the people were to go out, and tocomein. That 
these Levites were likewise the chief judges even in all civil causes, 
and that it was death to resist their sentence, Deut. xvii, 8-13 ; 1 Chron. 
xxiii, 4. Now whenever it can be supposed that these books of Moses were 
forged in some ages after Moses, it is impossible they could have been 
received as true, unless the forgers could have made the whole nation 
believe, that they had received these books from their fathers, had been 
instructed in them when they were children, and had taught them to their 
children ; moreover, that they had all been circumcised, and did circum. 
cise their children, in pursuance to what was commanded in these books: 
that they had observed the yearly passover, the weekly Sabbath, the new 
moons, and all these several feasts, fasts, and ceremonies, commanded in 
these books : that they had never eaten any swine’s flesh, or other meats 
prohibited in these books: that they had a magnificent tabernacle, with 
a visible priesthood to administer in it, which was confined to the tribe 
of Levi; over whom was placed a glorious high priest, clothed with 
great and mighty prerogatives, whose death only could deliver those that 
were fled to the cities of refuge, Num. xxxv, 25, 28. And that these 
priests were their ordinary judges, even in civil matters: I say, was it 
possible to have persuaded a whole nation of men, that they had known 
and practised all these things if they had not done it? or, secondly, to 


FIRST.) THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 113 


have received a book for truth, which said they had practised them, 
and appealed to that practice ? ; 

« But now let us descend to the utmost degree of supposition, viz. 
that these things were practised, before these books of Moses were 
forged; and that those books did only impose upon the nation, in making 
them believe that they had kept these observances in memory of such 
ind such things as were inserted in those books. 

“ Well then, let us proceed upon this supposition, (however groundless, ) 
and now, will not the same impossibilities occur, as in the former case 1 
For, first, this must suppose that the Jews kept all these observances in 
memory of nothing, or without knowing any thing of their original, or 
the reason why they kept them. Whereas these very observances did 
express the ground and reason of their being kept, as the passover, in 
memory of God’s passing over the children of the Israelites, in that 
night wherein he slew all the first born of Egypt, and so of the rest. . 

“But, secondly, let us suppose, contrary both to reason and matter of 
fact, that the Jews did not know any reason at all why they kept these 
observances ; yet was it possible to put it upon them—that they had 
kept tnese observances in memory of what they had never heard of 
before that day, whensoever you will suppose that these books of Moses 
were first forged? For example, suppose I should now forge some 
romantic story of strange things done a thousand years ago; and, in 
confirmation of this, should endeavour to persuade the Christian world 
that they had all along, from that day to this, kept the first day of the 
week in memory of such a hero, an Apollonius, a Barcosbas, or a 
Mohammed; and had all been baptized in his name; and swore by 
his name, and upon that very book (which I had then forged, and which 
they never saw before,) in their public judicatures ; that this book was 
their Gospel and law, which they had ever since that time, these thou- 
sand years past, universally received and owned, and none other. 1 
would ask any Deist, whether he thinks it possible that such a cheat 
could pass, or such a legend be received as the Gospel of Christians , 
and that they could be made believe that they never had any other 
Gospel ? 

‘Let me give one very familiar example more in this case. ‘There 
rs the Stonehenge in Salisbury Plain, every body knows it; and yet none 
gnows the reason why those great stones were set there, or by whom, 
or in memory of what. 

“Now, suppose I should write a book to-morrow, and tell them that 
these stones were set up by Hercules, Polyphemus, or Garagantua, in 
memory of such and such of their actions. And for a farther con- 
firmation of. this, should say in this book, that it was written at the time 
when such actions were done, and by the very actors themselves, 01 
vye witnesses. And that this book had been received as truth, and 

Vou. I. | 8 


114 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. |)PART 


quoted by authors of the greatest reputation in all ages since. More- 
over that this book was weil known in England, and enjoined by act of 
parliament to be taught our children, and that we did teach it to our 
children, and had been taught it ourselves when we were children, I 
ask any Deist, whether he thinks this could pass upon England? and 
whether, if I, or any other should insist upon it, we should not, instead 
of being believed, be sent to Bedlam ? 

« Now, let us compare this with the Stonehenge, as I may call it, or 
twelve great stones set up at Gilgal, which is told in the fourth chapter 
of Joshua. There it is said, verse 6, that the reason why they were 
set up was, that when their children in after ages, should ask the mean. 
ing of it, it should be told them. 

«“ And the thing in memory of which they were set up, was such as 
could not possibly be imposed upon that nation, at that time when it was 
said to be done; it was as wonderful and miraculous as their passage 
through the Red Sea. 

“For notice was given to the Israelites the day before, of this great 
miracle to be done, Josh. iii, 5. It was done at noon-day before the 
whole nation. And when the waters of Jordan were divided, it was not 
at any low ebb, but at the time when that river overflowed all his banks, 
verse 15. And it was done, not by winds, or in length of time which 
winds must take to do it; but all on the sudden, as soon as the ‘ feet of 
the priests that bare the ark were dipped in the brim of the water, then 
the waters which came down from above, stood and rose up upon a 
heap, very far from the city Adam, that is beside Zaretan ; and those 
that caine’ down toward the sea of the plain, even the Salt sea, failed, 
and were cut off: and the people passed over, right against Jericho. 
The priests stood in the midst of Jordan till all the armies of Israel had 
passed over. And it came to pass, when the priests that bare the ark of 
the covenant of the Lord were come up out of the midst of Jordan, and 
the soles of the priests’ feet were lift up upon the dry land, that the 
waters of Jordan returned into their place, and flowed over all his 
banks as they did before. And the people came out of Jordan on the 
tenth day of the first month, and encamped in Gilgal on the east border 
of Jericho, and those twelve stones which they took out of Jordan did 
Joshua pitch in Gilgal. And he spake unto the children of Israel, say - 
ing, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, 
What mean these stones? Then shall ve let your children know, saying, 
Israel came over this Jordan on dry land. For the Lord your God dried 
up the waters of Jordan from before you, until ye were passed over ; as 
the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up from before 
us, until we were gone over, that all the people of the earth might know 
the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty: that ye might fear the Lora 
your God for ever.’ Chap. iv, from verse 18. 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 115 


« Now, to form our argument, let us suppose that there never was 
any such thing as that passage over Jordan ; that these stones at Gilgal] 
were set up upon some other occasion, in some after age; and then, that 
some designing man invented this book of Joshua, and said that it was 
written by Joshua at that time, and gave this stonage at Gilgal, for a 
testimony of the truth of it; would not every body say to him, We know 
the stonage at Gilgal, but we never heard before of this reason for it, 
nor of this book of Joshua. Where has it been all this while? And 
where, and how came you, after so many ages, to findit? Beside, this 
book tells us, that this passage over Jordan was ordained to be taught 
our children, from age to age; and, therefore, that they were always to 
be instructed in the meaning of that stonage at Gilgal, as a memorial of 
it. But we were never taught it, when we were children ; nor did ever 
teach our children any such thing. And it is not likely that it could 
have been forgotten, while so remarkable a stonage did continue, which 
was set up for that and no other end! 

“ And if, for the reasons before given, no such imposition could be 
put upon us as to the stonage in Salisbury Plain ; how much less could 
it be to the stonage at Gilgal ? 

«And if, where we know not the reason of a bare naked mon iment, 
such a sham reason cannot be imposed, how much more is it impossible 
to impose upon us in actions and observances, which we celebrate in 
memory of particular passages? How impossible to make us forget those 
passages which we daily commemorate ; and persuade us that we had 
always kept such institutions in memory of what we never heard of 
before; that is, that we knew it before we knew it!” 

This able reasoning has never been refuted, nor can be; and if the 
books of the law must have been written by Moses, it is as easy to prove 
that Moses himself could not in the nature of the thing have deceived 
the people by an imposture, and a pretence of miraculous attestations, 
in order, like some later lawgivers among the heathens, to bring the 
people more willingly to submit to his institutions. The very instances 
of miracle he gives, rendered this impossible. “Suppose,” says the 
same writer, “ any man should pretend, that yesterday he divided the 
Thames, in presence of all the people of London, and carried the whole 
city, men, women, and children, over to Southwark, on. dry land, the 
waters standing like walls on both sides: I say, it is morally impossible 
that he could persuade the people of London, that this was true, when 
every man, woman, and child, could contradict him, and say, that this 
was a notorious falsehood, for that they had not seen the Thames se 
divided, nor had gone over on dry land. 

“ As to Moses, I suppose it will be allowed me, that he could not have 
persuaded 600,000 men, that he had brought them out of Egypt, through 
the Red Sea; fed them forty years, without bread, by miraculous manna, 


116 THEOLOGICAL IN¢TITUTES. [PART 


and the other matters of fact, recorded in his books, if they had not 
been true. Because every man’s senses that was then alive must have 
contradicted it. And therefore he must have imposed upon all their 
senses, if he could have made them believe it, when it was false and 
ho such things done. 

“From the same reason, it was equally impossible for him to have 
made them receive his five books as truth, and not to have rejected 
them as a manifest imposture, which told of all these things as dona 
before their eyes, if they had not been so done. See how positively he 
speaks to them, Deut. xi, 2, to verse 8: ‘And know you this day, for I 
speak not with your children, which have not known, and which have 
not seen the chastisement of the Lord your God, his greatness, his 
mighty hand, and his stretched-out arm, and his miracles, and his acts, 
which he did in the midst of Egypt, unto Pharaoh the king of Egypt, 
and unto all his land, and what he did unto the army of Egypt, unto their 
horses, and to their chariots; how he made the water of the Red Sea 
to overflow them as they pursued after you; and how the Lord hath 
destroyed them unto this day : And what he did unto you in the wilder- 
ness, until ye came unto this place; and what he did unto Dathan and 
Abiram, the sons of Eliah, the son of Reuben, how the earth opened her 
mouth and swallowed them up, and their households, and their tents, and 
all the substance that was in their possession, in the midst of all Israel. 
But your eyes have seen all the great acts of the Lord, which he 
did,’ &c. 

“From hence we must suppose it impossible that these books of 
Moses (if an imposture) could have been invented and put upon the 
people who were then alive when all these things were said to be done.” 

By these arguments (9) the genuineness and authenticity of the books 
of Moses are established ; and as to those of the prophets, which, with 
some predictions in the writings of Moses, comprise the prophetic 
branch of the evidence of the Divine authority of the revelations they 
contain, it can be proved both from Jewish tradition, the list of Josey hus, 
the Greek translation, and from their being quoted by ancient writers, 
that they existed many ages before several of those events occurred, to 
which we shall refer in the proper place as eminent and unequivocal 
instances of prophetic accomplishment. This part of the argument will 


(9) The reasoning of Leslie, so incontrovertible as to the four last books uf 
the Pentateuch, does not so fully apply to the book of Genesis. Few, however. 
will dispute the genuineness of this, if that of the other books of Moses be con 
ceded. That the book of Genesis must have been written prior to the other books 
of the Pentateuch is, however, certain, for Exodus constantly refers to events 
nowhere recorded but in the book of Genesis; and without the book of Genesis, 
the abrupt commencement of Exodus would have been as unintelligible to the 
Jews as it would be tous. ‘Fhe Pentateuch must therefore be considered as one 
200k, under five divisions, having a mutual coherence and dependence. 


FIRST. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 117 


.nerefore be also sufficiently established : the prophecy will be shown to 
nave been delivered long before the event, and the event will be proved 
to be a fulfilment of the prophecy. A more minute examination of the 
date of the prophetic books rather belongs to those who write expressly 
on the canon of Scripture. 

The same author from whom we have already largely quoted, (Lesize,) 
applies his celebrated four rules for determining the truth of matters of 
fact in general, with equal force to the facts of the Gospel history as to 
those contained in the Mosaic writings. The rules are, “1. That the 
matter of fact be such, as that men’s outward senses, their eyes and ears, 
may be judges of it.—2. That it be done publicly in the face of the 
world.—3. That not only public monuments be kept up in memory of 
it, but some outward actions be performed.—4. That such monuments 
and such actions and observances be instituted, and do commence from 
the time that the matter of fact was done.” 

We have seen the manner in which these rules are applied to the 
books of Moses. ‘The author thus applies them to the Gospel :— 

“1 come now to show, that as in the matters of fact of Moses, so 
likewise all these four marks do meet in the matters of fact which are 
recorded in the Gospel of our blessed Saviour. And my work herein 
will be the shorter, because all that is said before of Moses and his books, 
is every way as applicable to Christ and his Gospel. His works and 
his miracles are there said to be done publicly in the face of the world, 
as he argued to his accusers, ‘I spake openly to the world, and in secret 
have I said nothing,’ John xviii, 20. It is told, Acts ii, 41, that three 
thousand at one time, and Acts iv, 4, that above five thousand at ano 
ther time, were converted upon conviction of what themselves had seen, 
what had been done publicly before their eyes, wherein it was impossible 
to have imposed upon them. ‘Therefore here were the two first rules 
before mentioned. 

“Then for the two second: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper were 
instituted as perpetual memorials of these things; and they were not 
instituted in after ages, but at the very time when these things were said 
tv be done; and have been observed without interruption, in all ages 
tarough the whole Christian world, down all the way froin that time to 
this. And Christ himself did ordain apostles and other ministers of his 
Gospe:, to preach and administer the sacraments; and to govern his 
Church: and that always, even unto the end of the world, Matt. xviii, 
20. Accordingly, they have continued by regular succession to this 
day : and no doubt ever shall while the earth shall last. So that the 
Christian clergy are as notorious a matter of fact, as the tribe of Levi 
among the Jews. And the Gospel is as much a law to the Christians, 
as the book of Moses to the Jews: and it being part of the matters of 
act re:ated in the Gospel, that such an order of men were avnointec 


118 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. \EART 


by Christ, and to continue to the end of the world consequently, if the 
Gospel was a fiction, and invented (as it must be‘ in some ages after 
Christ ; then, at that time when it was first invented, there could be no 
such order of clergy, as derived themselves from the institution of Christ ; 
which must give the lie to the Gospel, and demonstrate the whole to be 
false.. And the matters of fact of Christ being pressed to be true, na 
otherwise than as there was at that time, (whenever the Deists will sup. 
pose the Gospel to be forged,) not only public sacraments of Christ’s 
institution, but an order of clergy, likewise, of his appointment to ad- 
minister them: and it being impossible there could be any such things 
hefore they were invented, it is as impossible that they should be re- 
ceived when invented. And therefore, by what was said above, it was 
as impossible to have imposed upon mankind in this matter, by invent- 
ing of it in after ages, as at the time when those things were said tu 
be done. 

“The matters of fact of Mohammed, or what is fabled of the heathen 
deities, do all want some of the aforesaid four rules, whereby the cer- 
tainty of matters of fact is demonstrated. First, for Mohammed, he 
pretended to no miracles, as he tells us in his Alcoran, c. 6, &c; and 
those which are commonly told of him pass among the Mohammedans 
themselves but as legendary fables; and, as such, are rejected by the 
wise and learned among them: as the legends of their saints are in the 
Church of Rome. See Dr. Prideaux’s Life of Mohammed, page 34. 

“But, in the next place, those which are told of him do all want the 
two first rules before mentioned. For his pretended converse with 
the moon; his Mersa, or night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem, 
and thence to heaven, &c, were not performed before any body. We 
have only his own word for them. And they are as groundless as the 
delusions of the Fox or Muggleton among ourselves. The same is 
to be said (in the second place) of the fables of the heathen gods, of 
Mercury’s stealing sheep, Jupiter’s turning himself into a bull; and the 
like; beside the folly and unworthiness of such senseless pretended 
miracles, 

“It is true the heathen deities had their priests: they had likewise 
feasts, games, and other public institutions in memory of them. But all 
these, want the fourth mark, viz. that such priesthood and institutions 
should commence from the time that such things as they commemorate 
were said to be done; otherwise they cannot secure after ages from 
the imposture, by detecting it, at the time when first invented, as hatt. 
been argued before. But the Bacchanalia, and other heathen feasts. 
were instituted many ages after what was reported of these gods was 
said to be done, and therefore can be no proof. And the priests of 
Bacchus, Apollo, @&c, were not ordained by these supposed gods; but 
were appointed by others, in after ages, only in honour to them, And 


#IRST.) THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 1*9 


therefore these orders of priests are no evidence to the matters of fact 
wh.ch are reported of their gods. 

“Now to apply what has been said. You may challenge all the 
Deists in the world to show any action that is fabulous, which has 
all the four rules or marks before mentioned. No, it is impossible. 
And (to resume a little what is spoken to before) the histories of Ex- 
odus and the Gospel never could have been received, if they had not 
heen true ; because the institution of the priesthood of Levi, and ot 
Christ ; of the Sabbath, the Passover, of Circumcision, of Baptism, 
and the Lord’s Supper, &c, are there related, as descending all the 
way down from’ those times, without interruption. And it is full as 
impossible to persuade men that they had been circumcised or bap 
tized, had circumcised or baptized their children, celebrated passovers, 
sabbaths, sacraments, &c, under the government and administration 
of a certain order of priests, if they had done none of these things, as 
to make them believe that they had gone through seas upon dry land, 
seen the dead raised, &c. And without believing these, it was im- 
possible that either the Law or the Gospel could have been received. 

“ And the truth of the matters of fact of Exodus and the Gospel, be- 
ing no otherwise pressed upon men, than as they have practised such 
public institutions, it is appealing to the senses of mankind for the 
truth of them; and makes it impossible for any to have invented such 
stories in after ages, without a palpable detection of the cheat when first 
invented ; as impossible as to have imposed upon the senses of mankind, 
at the time when such public matters of fact were said to be done.” (1) 

But other evidence of the truth of the Gospel history, beside that 
which arises from this convincing reasoning, may be adduced. 

In the first place, the narrative of the evangelists, as to the actions, 
é&c, of Christ, cannot be rejected without renouncing all faith in his- 
tory, any more than to deny that he really existed. 

«“ We have the same reason to believe that the evangelists have given 
us a true history of the life and transactions of Jesus, as we have that 
Xenophon and Plato have given us a faithful and just narrative of the 
character and doctrines of the excellent Socrares. The sacred 
writers were, in every respect, qualified for giving a real circum. 
stantial detail of the life and religion of the person whose memoirs they 
have transmitted down to us. They were the select companions and 
familiar friends of the hero of their story. They had free and liberal 
access to him at all times. They attended his public discourses, and in 
his moments of retirement he unbosomed his whole soul to them without 
disguise. They were daily witnesses of his sincerity and goodness of 


(1) See Note B at the end of this chapter, in which the same kind of argument 
ts illustrated by the miraculous gift of tongues. 


120 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


heart. They were spectators of the amazing operations he performed 
and of the silent’ unostentatious manner in which he performed them. 
In private he explained to them the doctrines of his religion in the,most 
familiar, endearing converse, and gradually initiated them into the prin- 
ciples of his Gospel, as their Jewish prejudices admitted. Some of 
these writers were his inseparable attendants, from the commencement 
of his public ministry to his death, and could give the world as true and 
faithful a narrative of his character and instructions, as Xenophon was 
enabled to publish of the life and philosophy of Socrates. If PLaro 
hath been in every respect qualified to compose an historical account 
of the behaviour of his master in his imprisonment; of the philosophic 
discourses he addressed to his friends before he drank the poisonous 
bowl; as he constantly attended him in those unhappy scenes; was 
present at those mournful interviews; (2)—in like manner was the 
Apostle Joun fitted for compiling a just and genuine narration of the 
last consolatory discourses our Lord delivered to his dejected followers, 
a little before his last sufferings, and of the unhappy exit he made, with 
its attendant circumstances, of which he was a personal spectator. 
The foundation of these things cannot be invalidated, without invali- 
dating the faith of history. No writers have enjoyed more propitious, 
few have ever enjoyed such favourable opportunities for publishing just 
accounts of persons and things as the evangelists. Most of the Greek 
and Roman historians lived long after the persons they immortalize, and 
the events they record. The sacred writers commemorate actions they 
saw, discourses they heard, persecutions they supported ; describe cha- 
racters with which they were familiarly conversant, and transactions 
and scenes in which they themselves were intimately interested. ‘The 
pages of their history are impressed with every feature of credibility : 
an artless simplicity characterizes all their writings. Nothing can be 
farther from vain ostentation and popular applause. No studied arts to 
dress up a cunningly devised fable. No vain declamation after any 
miracle of our Saviour they relate. ‘They record these astonishing 
operations with the same dispassionate coolness, as if they had been 
common transactions, without that ostentatious rhodomontade which 
enthusiasts and impostors universally employ. They give us a plain, 
unadorned narration of these amazing feats of supernatural power— 
saying nothing previously to raise our expectation, or after their per- 
formance breaking forth into any exclamation—but leaving the reader 
to draw the conclusion. The writers of these books are distinguished 
above all the authors who ever wrote accounts of persons and things, 


(2) Quid dicam de Socrate, (says Cicero,) cujus morti illachrymari soleo, Pla- 
tunem legens.—De Natura Deorum, p. 329, Edit. Davies, 1723.—See also PLato’a 
Phedo, passim, particularly pages 311, 312.—Edit. Forster, Oxon 1741 


FIRST.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 12] 


for their sincerity and integrity. Enthusiasts and wmposiors never pro 

claim to the world the weakness of their understanding, and the defects 
of their character. The evangelists honestly acquaint the reader with 
the lowness of their station, the indigence of their circumstances, the 
inveteracy of their national prejudices, their dullness of apprehension, 
their weakness of faith, their ambitious views, and the warm contentions 
they agitated among themselves. They even tell us how they basely 
deserted their Master, by a shameful precipitate flight, when he was 
seized by his enemies ; and that after his crucifixion, they had all again 
returned to their former secular employments—for ever resigning all 
the hopes they had once fondly cherished, and abandoning the cause in 
which they had so long been engaged, notwithstanding all the proofs 
which had been exhibited, and the conviction they had before enter- 
tained, that Jesus was the Messiah, and that his religion was from God. 
A faithful picture this, held up to the reader, for him to contemplate the 
true features of the writer’s mind. Such men as these were as far from 
being deceived themselves, as they were incapable of imposing a false- 
hood upon others. The sacred regard they had for truth appears in 
every thing they relate. They mention, with many affecting circum- 
stances, the obstinate, unreasonable incredulity of one of their asso- 
ciates—not convinced but by ocular and sensible demonstration. They 
might have concealed from the world their own faults and follies—or if 
* they had chosen to mention them, might have alleged plausible reasons 
to soften and extenuate them. But they related, without disguise, events 
and facts just as they happened, and left them to speak their own lan- 
guage. So that to reject a history thus circumstanced, and impeach the 
veracity of writers furnished with these qualifications for giving the 
justest accounts of personal characters and transactions, which they 
enjoyed the best opportunity for accurately observing and knowing, is 
an affront offered to the reason and understanding of mankind; a sole- 
cism against the laws of truth and history, which would, with equal rea- 
son, lead men to disbelieve every thing related in Hrroporus, 'Tnucy- 
pipEs, Dioporus Sicutus, Livy, and Tacrrus ; to confound all history 
with fable and fiction ; truth with falsehood, and veracity with impus- 
ture; and not to credit any thing how well soever attested ;—that there 
were such kings as the Stuarts, or such places as Paris and Rome, 
because we are not indulged with ocular conviction of them. The truth 
of the Gospel history [independent of the question of the inspiration of 
the sacred writers] rests upon the same basis with the truth of othe: 
ancient books, and its pretenszons are to be impartially examined by the 
same rules by which we judge of the credibility of all other historical 
monuments. And if we compare the merit of the sacred writers, a» 
historians, with that of other writers, we shall be convinced, that they 
are inferior to none who ever wrote, either with regard to knowledge of 


122 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, (PART 


persons, acquaintance with facts, candour of mind, and reverence for 
truth.” (Harwoon’s Introduction to the New Testament.) 

A second source of evidence to the truth of the history of the evan- 
gelists, may be brought from the testimonies of adversaries and hea- 
thens to the leading facts which they record. 

No public contradiction of this history was ever put forth by the 
Jewish rulers to stop the progress of a hateful religion, though they haa 
every motive to contradict it, both in justification of themselves, who 
were publicly charged as “murderers’’ of the “ Just One,” and to pre- 
serve the people from the infection of the spreading delusion. No such 
contradiction has been handed down, and none is adverted to or quotea 
by any ancient writer. This silence is not unimportant evidence , 
but the direct testimonies to the facts are numerous and important. 

We have already quoted the testimonies of Tacitus and Suetonius 
to the existence of Jesus Christ, the Founder of the Christian religion, 
and of his crucifixion in the reign of Tiberius, and during the procu- 
ratorship of Pontius Pilate, the time in which the evangelists place 
that event. Other references to heathen authors, who incidentally 
allude to Christ, his religion, and followers, might be given ; such as 
Martial, Juvenal, Epictetus, Trajan, the younger Pliny, Adrian, Apu- 
leius, Lucian of Samosata, and others; some of whom also afford tes- 
timonies to the destruction of Jerusalem, at the’ time, and in the cir- 
cumstances predicted by our Saviour, and to the antiquity and genu- ° 
ineness of the books of the New Testament. But as it is well ob- 
served by the learned Lardner, in his “ Collection of Jewish and Hea- 
then Testimonies,” (vol. iv, p. 330,) “ Among all the testimonies to 
Christianity which we have met with in the first ages, none are more 
valuable and important than the testimonies of those learned philoso- 
phers who wrote against us; Crisus, in the second century, Por. 
PHYRY and hrerocues in the third, and Jun1an in the fourth.” Re- 
ferring to Larpwner for full information on this point, a brief exhibi- 
tion of the admissions of these adversaries will be satisfactory. 

Cr.sus wrvte against Christianity not much above one hundred 
and thirty years after our Lord’s ascension, and his books were an- 
swered by the celebrated Or1eeN. The following is a summary of 
the references of this writer to the Gospel history, by Leland. (Answer 
to Christianity as old as the Creation, vol. ii, c. 5.) The passages at 
large may be seen in Lardner’s Testimonies. 

Celsus, a most bitter enemy of Christianity, who began in the second 
century, produces many passages out of the Gospels. He represents 
Jesus to have lived but a few years ago. He mentions his being born 
of a virgin; the angel’s appearing to Joseph on occasion of Mary’s 
being with child ; the star that appeared at his birth ; the wise men that 
came to worship him when an infant; and Herod’s massacreing the 


FIRST. j THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 123 


children; Joseph’s fleeing with the child into Egypt by the admoni- 
tion of an angel; the Holy Ghost descending on Jesus like a dove 
when he was baptized by John, and the voice from heaven declaring 
him to be the Son of God; his going about with his disciples, his heal- 
ing the sick and lame, and raising the dead; his foretelling his own 
sufferings and resurrection; his being betrayed and forsaken by his 
own disciples; his suffering both of his own accord and in obedience 
to his heavenly Father ; his grief and trouble, and his praying, Father, 
of it be possible, let this cup pass from me! the ignominious treatment 
he met with; the robe that was put upon him, the crown of thorns, 
the reed put into his hand; his drinking vinegar and gall, and his be- 
ing scourged and crucified; his being seen after his resurrection by a 
fanatical woman, (as he calls her, meaning Mary Magdalene,) and by 
his own companions and disciples; his showing them his hands that 
were pierced, the marks of his punishment. He also mentions the 
angels being seen at his sepulchre, and that some said it was one an- 
gel, others, that it was two; by which he hints at the seeming varia- 
tion in the accounts given of it by the evangelists. 

It is true, he mentions all these things only with a design to ridicule 
and expose them. But they furnish us with an uncontested proof, that 
the Gospel was then extant. Accordingly he expressly tells the Chris- 
tians, These things we have produced out of your own writings, p. 106. 
And he all along supposeth them to have been written by Christ’s own 
disciples, that lived and conversed with him; though he pretends they 
feigned many things for the honour of their Master, p. 69, 70. And 
he pretends, that he could tell many other things relative to Jesus, beside 
those things that were written of him by his own disciples ; but that he 
willingly passed by them, p. 67. We may conclude from his expres- 
sions, both that he was sensible that these accounts were written by 
Christ’s own disciples, (and indeed he never pretends to contest this,) 
and that he was not able to produce any contrary accounts to invali- 
date them, as he certainly would have done, if it had been in his 
power : since no man ever wrote with greater virulence against Chris- 
tianity than he. And indeed, how was it possible for ten or eleven 
publicans and boatmen, as he calls Christ’s disciples by way of contempt, 
(p- 47,) to have imposed such things on the world, if they had not been 
true, so as to persuade such vast multitudes to embrace a new and de- 
spised religion, contrary to all their prejudices and interests, and tu 
believe in one that had been crucified ! 

“There are several other things, which show that Celsus was ac- 
quainted with the Gospel. He produces several of our Saviour’s say- 
ings, there recorded, as that it is easier for a camel to pass through 
the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of 
God ; that to him who smites us on one cheek, we must turn the other; 


24 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


that it is not possible to serve two masters; his precept against thought- 
fulress for to-morrow, by a comparison drawn from crows and lilies ; 
his foretelling that false prophets should arise and work wonders. He 
mentions also some passages of the Apostle Paul, such as these: The 
world is crucified unto me and I unto the world ;—the wisdom of man is 
foolishness with God ;—an idol is nothing. 

“The use I would make of all this is, that it appears here with an 
uncontested evidence, by the testimony of one of the most malicious 
and virulent adversaries the Christian religion ever had, and who was 
also a man of considerable parts and learning, that the writings of the | 
evangelists were extant in his time, which was the next century to 
that in which the apostles lived; and that those accounts were writ 
ten by Christ’s own disciples, and consequently that they were writ 
‘ten in the very age in which the facts related were done, and when, 
therefore, it would have been the easiest thing in the world to have 
convicted them of falsehood, if they had not been true.” 

Porphyry flourished about the year 270, a man of great abilities; and 
his work against the Christians, in fifteen books, was long esteemed by 
the Gentiles, and thought worthy of being answered by Eusebius, and 
others in great repute for learning. He was well acquainted with the 
books of the Old and New Testaments; and in his writings are plain 
references to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, John, the Acts of the 
Apostles, and the Epistle to the Galatians, and probable references to 
the other Epistles of St. Paul. About the year 303, Hierocles, a man 
of learning and a magistrate, wrote against the Christians in two books. 
He was well acquainted with our Scriptures, and made many objections 
to them, thereby bearing testimony to their antiquity, and to the great 
respect which was shown them by the Christians; for he has referred 
both to the Gospels and to the Epistles. He mentions Peter and Paul 
by name, and did not deny the truth of our Saviour’s miracles ; but, in 
order to overthrow the argument which the Christians built upon them, 
he set up the reputed miracles of Apollonius Tyanzus to rival them. 
The Emperor Julian, who succeeded Constantius in the year 361, wrote 
also against the Christians, and in his work has undesignedly borne a 
valuable testimony to the history and books of the New Testament. He 
allows that Jesus was born in the reign of Augustus, at the time of a 
taxing made in Judea by Cyrenius. 'That the Christian religion had its 
rise, and began to be propagated, in the times of the Roman emperors 
Tiberius and Claudius. He bears witness to the genuineness and 
authenticity of the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, 
and the Acts of the Apostles. And he so quotes them as to intimate 
that these were the only historical books received by Christians, as of 
authority ; and the only authentic memoirs of Jesus Christ, and his 
apostles, and the doctrines preac>ed by them He allows the early 


FIRST. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES 125 


date of the Gospels, and even argues for them. He quotes, or plainly 
refers to the Acts of the Apostles, as already said; to St. Paul’s 
Epistles to the Romans, to the Corinthians, and to the Galatians. He 
does not deny the miracles of Jesus Christ, but allows him to have 
aealed the blind, and the lame, and demoniacs, and to have rebuked the 
winds, and to have walked upon the waves of the sea. He endeavours, 
indeed, to diminish those works, but in vain. He endeavours also to 
lessen the number of the early believers in Jesus, but acknowledges, 
that there were multitudes of such men in Greece and Italy before St. 
John wrote his Gospel. He likewise affects to diminish the quality of 
the early believers ; and yet acknowledges, that beside men servants and 
maid servants, Cornelius, a Roman centurion at Cesarea, and Sergius 
Paulus, proconsul of Cyprus, were converted to the faith of Jesus be- 
fore the end of the reign of Claudius. And he often speaks with great 
indignation of Peter and Paul, those two great apostles of Jesus, and 
successful preachers of his Gospel, so that, upon the whole, he has 
undesignedly borne witness to the truth of many things recorded in the 
sooks of the New Testament. He aimed to overthrow the Christian 
celigion, but has confirmed it. His arguments against it are perfectly 
harmless, and insufficient to unsettle the weakest Christian. 

The quotations from Porphyry, Hierocles, and Julian, may be consulted 

in Lardner, who thus sums up his observations on their testimony :— 
' « They bear a fuller and more valuable testimony to the books of the 
New Testament, and to the facts of the evangelical history, and to the 
affairs of Christians, than all our other witnesses beside. They pro- 
posed to overthrow the arguments for Christianity. They aimed to 
bring back to Gentilism those who had forsaken it, and to put a stop to 
the progress of Christianity, by the farther addition of new converts. 
But in those designs they had very little success in their own times; and 
their works, composed and published in the early days of Christianity, 
are now a testimony in our favour, and will be of use in the defence 
of Christianity to the latest ages. 

“One thing more which may be taken notice of, is this: that the 
remains of our ancient adversaries confirm the present prevailing senti- 
ments of Christians, concerning those books of the New Testament 
which we call canonical, and are in the greatest authority with us. For 
their writings show, that those very books, and not any others now 
generally called apocryphal, are the books which always were in the 
highest repute with Christians, and were then the rule of their faith, 
as they are now of ours.” 

To the same effect are the observations of Paley. ‘These testimonies 
“ prove that neither Celsus in the second, Porphyry in the third, nor Julian 
n the fourth century, suspected the authenticity of these books, or even 
nsinuated that Christians were mistaken in the authors to whom they 


126 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 'PART 


ascribed them. Not one of them expressed an opinion upon this subject 
different from that which is holden by Christians. And when we con- 
sider how much it would have availed them to cast a doubt upon this 
point if they could, and how ready they showed themselves to take 
every advantage in their power, and that they were men of learning 
and inquiry, their concession, or rather their suffrage upon the sub. 
ject, is extremely valuable.” 

That the facts and statements recorded in the evangelic history 
were not forgeries of a subsequent period, is made also still more 
indubitable from the fact, that the four Gospels and the Acts of the 
Apostles are quoted or alluded to by a series of Christians, beginning 
with those who were contemporary with the apostles, or who immediately 
followed, and proceeding in close and regular succession from their time 
to the present. “The medium of proof stated in this proposition,” 
observes Dr. Paley, “is of all others the most unquestionable, and is not 
diminished by the lapse of ages. Bishop Burnet, in the History of his 
Own Times, inserts various extracts from Lord Clarendon’s History. 
One such assertion is a proof that Lord Clarendon’s History was extant 
when Bishop Burnet wrote, that it had been read and received by him 
as a work of Lord Clarendon’s, and regarded by him as an authentic 
account of the transactions which it relates; and it will be a proof of 
these points a thousand years hence. The application of this argument 
to the Gospel history is obvious. If the different books which are 
received by Christians as containing this history are quoted by a series 
of writers, as genuine in respect of their authors, and as authentic in 
respect to their narrative, up to the age in which the writers’ of them 
.ived, then it is clear that these books must have had an existence pre- 
vious to the earliest of those writings in which they are quoted, and that 
they were then admitted as authentic.” “Their genuineness is made 
out, as well by the general arguments which evince the genuineness of 
the most indisputed remains of antiquity, as also by peculiar and specific 
proofs, by citations from them in writings belonging to a period imme. 
diately contiguous to that in which they were published; by the dis- 
tinguished regard paid by early Christians to the authority of these 
books ; (which regard was manifested by their collecting of them into a 
volume, appropriating to that volume titles of peculiar respect, trans- 
lating them into various languages, disposing them into harmonies, 
writing commentaries upon them, and still more conspicuously by the 
reading of them in their public assemblies in all parts of the world ;) 
by a universal agreement with respect to these books, while doubts were 
entertained concerning some others ; by contending sects appealing to 
them; by many formal catalogues of these, as of certain and authort- 
tative writings published in different and distant parts of the world: 
lastly, by the absence or defect of the above-cited topics of evidence, 


PIRST. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 127 


when applied to any other histories of the same subject.’ (Paley’s 
Evidences, cap. X.) 

All the parts of this argument may be seen clearly made out by 
passages quoted from the writers of ths primitive ages of the Christian 
Church, in Dr. Lardner’s “ Credibility,” Dr. Paley’s “ Evidences,” and 
many other writers in defence of Christianity. It is exhibited in great 
force also in the first volume of Horne’s “ Introduction to the Study of 
the Scriptures.” 


Nott A.—Page 110. 


«Tne documents which claim to have been thus handed down to posterity are 
the five books attributed to Moses himself, and usually denominated the Penta- 
teuch. Now, the question before us is, whether they were, indeed, written 
synchronically with the Exodus, or whetheg they were composed in the name of 
Moses, at a much later period. 

“That the Jews have acknowledged the authenticity of the Pentateuch, from 
the present day to the era of our Lord’s nativity, a period of more than eighteen 
centuries, admits not of a possibility of a doubt. But this era is long posterior 
to that of Moses himself: it will be necessary, therefore, in order to establish 
the point under discussion, to travel backward, step by step, so far as we can 
safely penetrate, according to the established rules of moral evidence. 

‘¢ About two hundred and seventy-seven years before the Christian era, in the 
reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, the Pentateuch, with the other 
books of the Old Testament, was translated into Greek, for the use of the Alex- 
audrian Jews; and from the almost universal prevalence of that language, it 
henceforth became very widely disseminated, and was thus rendered accessible 
to the learned and inquisitive of every country. 

‘¢ Now, that Greek translation which is still extant, and which is in the hands 
of almost every person, demonstrates that the Hebrew Pentateuch must have 
existed two hundred and seventy-seven years before Christ, because there is that 
correspondency between the two, which amply proves that the former must have 
been a version of the latter. But, if it certainly existed two hundred and seventy. 
seven years before Christ, it must have existed in the days of Ezra, at the time 
of the return from Babylon, in the year before Christ five hundred and thirty-six ; 
because there is no point between those two epochs, to which, with a shadow of 
probability, we can ascribe its composition. It existed, therefore, in the year 
five hundred and thirty-six, before the Christian era. 

‘“‘Thus we have gained one retrogressive step: let us next see whether, with 
e jual certainty, we can gain another. 

* As it cannot be rationally denied, that the Pentateuch has been in existence 
ever since the return of the Jews from Babylon, in the year five hundred and thirty- 
six, before the Christian era, some have thence been pleased to contend, that it 
was the work of Ezra; being a digested compilation of the indistinct and fabulous 
traditions of that people, which, like most nations of antiquity, they possessed in 
great abundance. 

‘To such an opinion, when thoroughly sifted, there are insuperable objections, 
however specious it may appear to a hasty observer. 

“In the book of Ezra, the law of Moses, the man of God, is specifically re. 
terroa to, ae a wel) known written document then actually existing ; and, in the 


(28 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. _PAR? 


1ccecding book of Nehemiah, we have an ample account of the mode in which 
that identical written document was openly read to the people, under the precise 
name of the Book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded to Israel. 
Nor is this all: it was not that Ezra produced a new volume, and called upon 
the Jews to receive it as the authentic law of Moses; but the people themselvea 
called upon Ezra to bring forth and read that book, as a work with which they 
hac long been familiarly acquainted. The law of Moses, therefore, must have beva 
well known to exist in writing previous to the return from Babylon ; and as Ezra 
could not have produced under that name a mere compilation of oral traditione. 
so neither could he have suppressed the ancient volume of the law, nor have set 
forth instead of it, that volume which the Jews have ever since received as the 
authentic Pentateuch. His own book affords proof positive, that some written 
law of Moses was known previously to have existed: and the call of the people, 
that it should be read to them, demonstrates that it could not long have perished ; 
for if the work had been confessedly lost for many years, the people could not. 
have called for that, which neither they nor their fathers had ever beheld. If, 
then, it were suppressed by Ezra, in fayour of his own spurious composition, he 
must both have contrived to make flimself master of every extant copy of the 
gonuine work, and he must have persuaded a whole people to receive as genuine, 
what almost every man among them must immediately have perceived to be 
spurious. For, if the genuine work were in existence down to the very time of 
Ezra, a point clearly involved in the demand of the people to have it read to 
them; and if the people had long been accustomed to hear it read to them, 
a point equally implied in their recorded demand upon Ezra, they must all have 
been adequately acquainted with its contents; and the higher ranks among them 
must have repeatedly perused, and must, therefore have known the whole of it, 
just as intimately as Ezra could do himself. But, what was thus universally 
familiar could be no more set aside by the fiat of an individual in favour of his 
own spurious composition, than the Pentateuch could now be set asidu through- 
out Christendom, in favour of some newly produced volume which claimed to be 
the genuine law of Moses. Add to this, that when the foundations of the 
second temple were laid, many persons were alive who well remembered the 
first. These consequently must have known whether there was or was not a 
‘critten law of Moses anterior to the captivity ; nor could they be deceived by the 
production of any novel composition by Ezra. 

‘‘Such is the evidence afforded by the very books of Ezra and Nehemiah, to 
the existence of a written law of Moses prior to the return from Babylon, of a 
law familiarly known to the whole body of the people. But there is yet another 
evidence to the same purpose, analogous to that furnished by the Greek transla 
tion of the seventy. 

‘We have now extant two Hebrew copies of the law of Moses: the one 
received by the Jews, the other acknowledged by the Samaritans: each main. 
taining that their own is the genuine record. Now, if we examine these 
two copies, we shal! find thtir coincidence throughout to be such, that we 
cannot doubt a moment as to their original identity in every word, and in every 
sentence. 

“We read, that after the king of Assyria had deported the ten tribes, and had 
colonized their territories with a mixed multitude from various parts of his dcmi- 
nions, the new settlers were infested by the incursions of wild beasts. This 
calamity, agreeably to the prevalent notion of local tutelary gods, they attributed 
to their not worshipping the god of the land after his own prescribed manner.— 
fo remedy the defect, therefore, one of the deported Levitical priests was sent te 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 129 


them, that he might teach them, as the Assyrian monarch expressed himself, the 
manner of the god of the land. The priest accordingly came among them, and 
dwelt in Bethel, and taught them how they should fear Jehovah; but while thev 
duly received his instructions, they mixed the service of the true God with the 
service of their native idols. Hence, so far as that particular was concerned, we 
are informed, that they neither did after their statutes, nor after their ordinances, 
nor after the law and commandment which Jehovah commanded the children of 
J icob. 

*« Now, it is obvious, that the whole of this account supposes them to have a 
copy of the Pentateuch ; for, if the priest were to instruct them in the law of the 
Lord, he would, of course, communicate to them a copy of that law; and 
though their ancient superstitions led them to disregard its prohibitions, still it 
could not have been properly said of them, that they neither did after their sta- 
tutes, nor after their ordinances, nor after the law and commandment which Jeho- 
- vah commanded the children of Jacob, if all the while they were wholly nnae 

quainted with those statutes and those ordinances, and with that law, and with 
that commandment. It is manifest, therefore, that they must at that time have 
received the copy of the Pentateuch, which they always afterward religiously 
preserved. But this copy is the very same as that which the Jews and ourselves 
still receive. Consequently, as the Samaritans received it some years prior even 
to the Babylonic captivity of Judah, and as it is the very same code as that which 
some would fain attribute to Ezra, we may be sure, that that learned scribe could 
not possibly have been its author, but that he has handed down to us the genuine 
luw of Moses, with the utmost good faith and integrity. . 

“« Here we cannot but observe the providence of God in raising up so unobjec.- 
tionable a testimony as that of the Samaritans. They and the Jews cordially 
hated each other, and they both possessed a copy of the Pentateuch. ence, had 

there been any disposition to tamper with the text, they acted as a mutual check; 
and the result has been, that perhaps not a wilful alteration can be shown, except 
the text relative to Gerizim and Ebal. 

'- The universal admission of the Pentateuch, as the inspired law of Moses, 
throughout the whole commonwealth of Israel, prior to its disruption into two 
hostile kingdoms, the magnificent temple of Solomon, and the whole ritua’ 
attached to it, plainly depends altogether upon the previously existing Penta- 
teuch ; and that code so strictly prohibits more than one practice of Solomon, 
tlaat even to say nothing of the general objection from novelty, it is incredible 
either that he should have been its author, or that it should have been written 
under Ais sanction and authority. 

«As little can we, with any degree of probability, ascribe it to David. His 
life was occupied with almost incessant troubles and warfare ; and it is difficult 
to conceive, how a book written by that prince could, in the space of a very few 
years, be universally received as the inspired composition of Moses, when ne 
person had ever previously heard that Moses left any legislative code behind 
him. 

“The Pentateuch might be more plausibly given to Samuel than to either of 
chose two princes ; but this supposition wil) not stand for a moment the test of 
rational inquiry. We shall still have the same difficulty to contend with as 
before: we shall still have to point out how it was possible that Samuel should 
persuade all Israel to adopt, as the inspired and authoritative law of Moses, 2 
mere modern composition of his own, which no person had ever previously 
heard of. 


«© We have now ascended to within less than four «.) taurine eer tae 


FOP: 9 


130 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


from Egypt, and the alleged promulgation of the law from Mount Sinai; ana 
from Ezra to Samuel, we have found no person to whom the composition of the 
Pentateuch can, with any show of reason or probability, be assigned. ‘The 
only remainiv.y question is, whether it can be thought to have been written 
during the three f.andred and fifty-six years which elapsed between the en- 
trance of the Israelites into Palestine, and the appointment of Saul to be king 
of Israei. 

“*« Now, the whole history which we have of that period utterly forbids such a 
supposition. The Israelites, though perpetually lapsing into idolatry, are uni- 
formly aescribed as acknowledging the authority of a written law of Moses; and 
this law, from generation to generation, is stated to be the directory by which 
the judges governed the people. ‘Thus, Samuel expressly refers to a well known 
commandment of Jehovah, and to the Divine legation of Moses and Aaron, in a 
speech which he made to the assembled Israelites. Thus, the man of God, in 
his prophetic threat to Eli, similarly refers to the familiar circumstance recorded _ 
in the Pentateuch, that the house of his ancestor had been chosen to the pontifi- 
cate out of all the tribes of Israel. Thus, when the nations are enumerated 
which were left to prove the people, it is said that they were left for this pur- 
pose, that it might be known whether the Israelites would hearken unto the 
commandments of Jehovah, which he commanded their fathers by the hand ot 
Moses. ‘Thus, Joshua is declared to have written the book which bears his 
name, as a supplement to a prior book, which is denominated the book of the law 
af God. Thus, likewise, he specially asserts, that this book of the law of God is 
the book of the law of Moses ; speaking familiarly of precepts, which are written 
in that book; represents himself as reading its contents to all the assembled 
people, so that none of them could be ignorant of its purport; and mentions his 
writing a copy of it in the presence of the children of Israel. And thus, finally, 
we hear of the original, whence that copy is professed to have been taken, in the 
volume of the Pentateuch itself; for we are there told, that Mcses with his own 
hand wrote the words of ruis law in a Book; and that he then commanded the 
Levites to take THIs Book of the law and put it in the side of the ark of the cove 
nant, that it might be there for a witness in all succeeding ages against the 
Israelites, in case they should violate its precepts.” (Abridged from FanEr’s 
Hore Musaice. 


Notr B.—Page 119. 


‘In events so public and so signal, there was no room for mistake or decep. 
tion. Of all the miracles recorded in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testa. 
ments, there is ndt one of which the evidence is so multiplied as that of the descent 
of the Holy Ghost on the day of pentecost; for it rests not on the testimony of 
those, whether many or few, who were all with one accord in one place. It is 
testified by all Jerusalem, and by the natives of regions far distant from Jerusalem ; 
for there were then, says the historian, ‘dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, 
out of every nation under heaven ; and when the inspiration of the disciples was 
noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were all confounded, because 
that every man heard them speak in his own language. And they were all 
amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these who 
sveak Galileans? and how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we 
were born? Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopo. 
tamia, and in Judea, and Cappadocia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and the parts 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 13) 


of Lybia about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and prosclytes, Cretas 
and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works 
-f God? 

‘“‘It hath been objected by infidelity to the resurrection of Christ, that he 
ought to have appeared publicly, wherever he had appeared before his cruci- 
fixion: but here is a miracle displayed much farther than the resurrection of 
Christ could have been by his preaching openly, and working miracles for forty 
days in the temple and synagogues of Jerusalem, as he had done formerly; and 
this miracle is so connected with the resurrection, that if the apostles speaking 
a variety of tongues be admitted, the resurrection of Jesus cannot be denied.— 
In reply to those (probably the natives of Jerusalem,) who, imagining that the 
apostles uttered gibberish, charged them with being full of new wine, St. Peter 
said, ‘ Ye men of Judea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto 
you, and hearken to my words; for these men are not drunken as ye suppose, 
seeing it is but the third hour of the day. Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved 
of God among you by miracles, and signs, and wonders, which God did by him 
in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know: him heing delivered by the 
determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked 
nands have crucified and slain. This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we are 
all witnesses. Therefore, being by the right hand of God exalted, and having 
received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this 
which ye now see and hear.’ 

“Thus, by the miraculous effusion of the Holy Spirit on the day of pentecost, 
were the resurrection and ascension of Christ proved to a variety of nations of 
Asia, Africa, and Europe, all the quarters of the globe which were then known, 
as completely as if he had actually appeared among that mixed multitude in Je- 
rusalem, reproved the high priest and council of the Jews for their unbelief and 
nardness of heart, and then ascended in their presence to heaven. They had such 
evidence as was incontrovertible, that St. Peter and the other apostles were in- 
snired by the Spirit of God; they could not but know, as every Theist admits, 
cnat the Spirit of God never was, nor ever will be, shed abroad to enable any 
order of men to propagate falsehood with success; one of those who, by this in. 
spiration, were speaking correctly a variety of tongues, assured them, that Jesus 
of Nazareth, whom they had slain, was raised from the dead, and exalted to the 
right hand of God; and that the same Jesus had, according to his promise, shed 
abroad on the apostles that which they both saw and heard. The consequence 
of all this, we are told, was, that three thousand of his audience were instantly 
converted to the faith, and the same day incorporated into the Church by baptism. 

‘‘ Would any in his senses have written a narrative of such events as these at 
the very time when they are said to have happened, and in any one of those 
countries, to the inhabitants of which he appeals as witnesses of their truth, if 
he had not been aware that their truth could not be called in question? Would 
any forger of such a book as the Acts of the Apostles, at a period near to that in 
which he relates that such astonishing events had happened, have needlessly 
appealed, for the truth of his narrative, to the people of all nations, and thus gone 
out of his way to furnish his readers with innumerable means of detecting his 
imposture ? At no period, indeed, could forged books, such as the four Gospels 
and the Acts of the Apostles, have been received as authentic, unless all the events 
which they record, whether natural or supernatural, had been believed, all the 
principal doctrines received, and all the rites of religion which they prescribe 
practised, from the very period at which they represent the Son of God as s0. 
journmg on earth, laying the foundation of his Church, dying on a cross, rising 


132 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. ,PART 


from the dead, and ascending into heaven. The argument cannot, perhaps, be 
employed to prove the authenticity of all the epistles which make so great a pa~* 
of the New Testament ; but it is certainly as applicable to some of them as it is 
to the Gospels, and the book called the Acts of the Apostles. 

‘‘The apostles, as Michaelis justly observes, (Introduction to the New Testu 
ment, chap ii, sect. 1,) ‘ frequently allude, in their epistles, to the gift of miracles, 
which they had communicated to the Christian converts by the imposition of 
hands, in confirmation of the doctrine delivered in their speeches and writings, 
and sometimes to miracles, which they themselves had performed.’ Now if these 
epistles are really genuine, the miracles referred to must certainly have been 
wrought, and the doctrines preached must have been Divine; for no man in his 
senses would have written to large communities, that he had not only performed 
miracles in their presence, in confirmation of the Divine origin of certain doe 
trines, but that he had likewise communicated to them the same extraordinary 
endowments. Or if we can suppose any human being to have possessed sufficient 
effrontery to write in this manner to any community, it is obvious that, so far 
from gaining credit to his doctrine by such assertions, if not known to be true, 
he would have exposed himself to the utmost ridicule and contempt, and have 
ruined the cause which he attempted to support by such absurd conduct. 

“St. Paul’s first Epistle to the Thessalonians is addressed to a Christian Church, 
which he had lately founded, and to which he had preached the Gospel only 
three Sabbath days. A sudden persecution obliged him to quit this community 
before he had given to it its proper degree of consistence ; and, what is of conse. 
quence in the present instance, he was protected neither by the power of the 
magistrate nor the favour of the vulgar. A pretended wonder-worker, who has 
once drawn the populace to his party, may easily perform his exploits, and safely 
proclaim them. But this very populace, at the instigation of the Jews, had ex 
cited the insurrection, which obliged St. Paul to quit the town. He sends there 
fore to the Thessalonians, who had received the Gospel, but whose faith, he 
apprehended,. might waver through persecution, authorities, and proofs of his 
Divine mission, of which authorities the first and the chief are miracles and the 
gifts of the Holy Ghost, 1 Thess. i, 5-10.* Is it possible, now, that St. Paul, 
without forfeiting all pretensions to common sense, could, when writing to a 
Church which he had lately established, have spoken of miracles performed, and 
gifts of the Holy Ghost communicated, if no member of that Church had seen the 
one, or received the other; nay, if many members had not witnessed both the 
performance and the effusions of the Holy Ghost? But it is equally impossible 
that the epistle, making this appeal to miracles and spiritual gifts, could have 
been received as authentic, if forged in the name of St. Paul, at any future period, 
during the existence of a Christian Church at Thessalonica, In the two first 
chapters it represents its author and two of his companions as having been lately 
in that city, and appeals to the Church for the manner in which they had con- 
ducted themselves while there, and for the zeal and success with which they had 
preached the Gospel, and it concludes with these awful words: ‘TIT adjure yeu 
(opx«w vpas) by the Lord, that this epistl> be read unto all the holy brethren;’ t. e 
all the Christians of the community. Had St. Paul, and Timotheus, and Sylva 
nus, never been in Thessalonica, or had they conducted themselves in any respect 
differently from what they are said to have done in the two first chapters, these 
chapters would have convicted the author of this epistle of forgery, at whatever 
time it had made its first appearance. Had they been actually there, and 


* See Hardy’s Greek Testament; Whitby on the Place, with Schleusner and 
Parkhurst’s Lexicons on the word duvays, 


FIRST. } THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 133 


preached, and wrought miracles just as they are said to have done; and had some 
impostor, knowing this, forged the epistle before us at a considerable distance of 
time, the adjuration at the end of it must instantly have detected the forgery 
Every Thessalonian Christian of common sense would have said, ‘How came we 
never to hear of this epistle before? Its author represents himself and two of his 
triends as having converted us to the faith a very short time before it was written 
and sent to us, and he charges those to whom it was immediately sent in the 
most solemn manner possible, that they should cause it to be read to every one 
of us; no Christian in Thessalonica would, in a matter of this kind, have dared 
to disobey the authority of an apostle, especially when enforced by so awful an 
adjuration ; and yet neither we nor our fathers ever heard of this epistle, ti!] now 
that Paul, and Sylvanus, and Timotheus are all dead, and therefore incapable of 
either confirming or refuting its authenticity ! Such an epistle, if not genuine, 
could never have been received by any community. 

‘¢ The same apostie, in his first Epistle to the Corinthians, corrects the abuse 
of certain spiritual gifts, particularly that of speaking divers kinds of tongues, 
and prescribes rules for the employment of these supernatural talents; he enters 
into a particular detail of them, as they existed in the Corinthian Church ; reasons 
on their respective worth and excellence ; says that they were limited in their 
duration, that they were no distinguishing mark of Divine favour, nor of so great 
importance as faith and virtue, the love of God, and charity to our neighbours. 
Now, if this epistle was really written by St. Paul to the Corinthians, and they 
had actually received no spiritual gifts, no power, imparted by extraordinary 
means, of speaking foreign languages, the proper place to be assigned him were 
not among impostors, but among those who had lost their understanding. A 
juggler may deceive by the dexterity of his hands, and persuade the ignorant and 
the credulous that more than human means are requisite for the performance of 
his extraordinary feats; but he will hardly persuade those whose understandings 
remain unimpaired, that he has likewise communicated to his spectators the power 
of working miracles, and of speaking languages which they had never learned. 
were they conscious of their inability to perform the one, or to speak the other. 
If the epistle, therefore, was written during the life of St. Paul, and received by 
the Corinthian Church, it is impossible to doubt but that St. Paul was its author, 
and that among the Corinthians were prevalent those spiritual gifts of which he 
labours to correct the abuse. If those gifts were never prevalent among the 
Corinthian Christians, and this epistle was not seen by them until the next age, 
it could not have been received by the Corinthian Church as the genuine writing 
of the apostle, because the members of that Church must have been aware that 
if those gifts, of which it speaks, had been really possessed, and so generally dis. 
played by their fathers, as it represents them to have been, some of themselves 
‘vould surely have heard their fathers mention them ; and as the epistle treats of 
sume of the most important subjects that ever occupied the mind of man, the 
introduction of death into the world through Adam, and the resurrection of the 
dead through Christ, they must have inferred that their fathers would not have 
secreted from them their children a treatise on topics so interesting to the whole 
human race.” (Gleig’s Edition of Stackhouse’s History of the Bible, vol. iii. 
{ntro. p. 11, &c.) 


134 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, [vART 


CHAPTER XIII. 
THE UNCORRUPTED PRESERVATION OF THE Books or ScRIPTUKE. 


Tue historical evidence of the antiquity and genuineness of the books 
ascribed to Moses, and those which contain the history of Christ and the 
establishment of his religion, being thus complete, the integrity of the 
copies at present received is the point next in question. 

Witb respect to the Scriptures of the Old Testament; the list of Jo- 
sephus, the Septuagint translation, and the Samaritan Pentateuch, are 
sufficient proofs that the books which are received by us as sacred, are 
the same as those received by the Jews and Samaritans long before the 
Christian era. For the New Testament; beside the quotations from 
almost all the books now included in that volume and references to them 
by name in the earliest Christian writers, catalogues of authentic Scrip- 
tures were published at very early periods, which, says Dr. Paley, 
“though numerous, and made in countries at a wide distance from one 
another, differ very little, differ in nothing material, and all contain the 
four Gospels. 

“Tn the writings of Origen which remain, and in some extracts pre- 
served by Eusebius, from works of his which are now lost, there are 
enumerations of the books of Scripture, in which the four Gospels and 
the Acts of the Apostles are distinctly and honourably specified, and in 
which no books appear beside what are now received. (Lard. Cred. vol. 
iii, p. 234, et seq., vol. viii, p. 196.) The date of Origen’s works is 
A. D. 230. 

«“ Athanasius, about a century afterward, delivered a catalogue of the 
books of the New Testament in form, containing our Scriptures and no 
others; of which he says, ‘In these alone the doctrine of religion is 
taught; let no man add to them, or take any thing from them.’ (lard. 
Cred. vol. vill, p. 223.) 

« About twenty years after Athanasius, Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem, 
set forth a catalogue of the books of Scripture publicly read at that time 
in the Church of Jerusalem, exactly the same as ours, except that the 
‘Revelation’ is omitted. (Lard. Cred. vol. viii, p. 270.) 

« And, fifteen years after Cyril, the council of Laodicea delivered an 
authoritative catalogue of canonical Scripture, like Cyril’s, the same as 
ours, with the omission of the ‘ Revelation.’ 

‘¢ Catalogues now become frequent. Within thirty years after the 
last date, that is, from the year 363 to near the conclusion of the fourth 
century, we have catalogues by Epiphanius, (Lard. Cred. vol. viii, p. 
368,) by Gregory Nazianzen, (Lard. Cred. vol. ix, p. 132,) by Philas. 
ter, bishop of Brescia in Italy, (Lard. Cred. vol. ix, p. 373,) by Amphi. 
lochius, bishop of Iconium, all, as they are sometimes called, clean 


FIRS T.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, 135 


catalogues, (that is, they admit no books into the number beside what 
we now receive,) and all, for every purpose of historic evidence, the 
same as ours. (3) 

“ Within the same period, Jerome, the most learned Christian writer 
of his age, delivered a catalogue of the books of the New Testament, 
recognizing every book now received, with the intimation of a doubt 
concerning the Epistle to the Hebrews alone, and taking not the least 
notice of any book which is not now received. (Lard. Cred, vol. x, 
p- 77.) . 

“Contemporary with Jerome, who lived in Palestine, was Saint Au- 
‘gustine, in Africa, who published likewise a catalogue, without joining 
to the Scriptures, as books of authority, any other ecclesiastical writing 
whatever, and without omitting one which we at this day acknowledge. 
(Lard. Cred. vol. x, p. 213.) 

- And with these concurs another contemporary writer, Rufen, pres. 
byter of Aquileia, whose catalogue, like theirs, is perfect and unmixed, 
and concludes with these remarkable words: ‘'These are the volumes 
which the fathers have included in the canon, and out of which they 
would have us prove the doctrine of our faith.’” (Lard. Cred. vol. x, 
page 187.) 

This, it is true, only proves that the books are substantially the same ; 
but the evidence is abundant, that they have descended to us without 
any material alteration whatever. 

“1. Before that event, [the time of Christ, ] the regard which was paid 
to them by the Jews, especially to the law, would render any forgery 
or material change in their contents impossible. The law having been 
the deed by which the land of Canaan was divided among the Israelites, 
it is improbable that this people who possessed that land, would suffer it 
to be altered or falsified. The distinction of the twelve tribes, and their 
separate interests, made it more difficult to alter their liw than that of 
other nations less jealous than the Jews. Farther, a certain statec 
seasons, the law was publicly read before all the people of Israel, Deut. 
xxxi, 9-13; Joshua vili, 34, 35; Neh. viii, 1-5; and it was appointed 
to be kept in the ark, for a constant memorial against those who trans- 
gressed it, Deut. xxxi, 26. Their king was required to write him a 
copy of this law in a book, out of that which is before the priests, the 
Levites, and to read therein all the days of his life, Deut. xvii, 18, 
19; their priests also were commanded to teach the children of Israel 
all the statutes, which the Lord had spoken to them by the hand of Moses, 
Levit. x, 11; and parents were charged not only to make it familiar 
to themselves, but also to teach it diligently to their children, Deut. 


(3) Epiphanius omits the Acts of the Apostles. This must have been an acci. 
dental mistake, either in him or in some copyist of his work; for he elsewhere 
expressiy refers to this book, and ascribes it to Luke 


136 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


xvii, 18, 19; beside which, a severe prohibition was annexed, against 
either making any addition to, or c.minution from the law, Deut. iv, 2; 
xl, 32. | Now such precepts as these could not have been given by an 
impostor who was adding to it, and who would wish men to forget 
rather than enjoin them to remember it: for, as all the people were 
obliged to know and observe the law under severe penalties, they were, 
in a manner, the trustees and guardians of the law, as well as the 
priests and Levites. The people, who were to teach their children 
inust have had copies of it; the priests and Levites must have had 
copies of it; and the magistrates must have had copies of it, as being 
the law of the land. Farther, after the people were divided into two 
kingdoms, both the people of Israel and those of Judah still retained 
the same book of the law: and the rivalry or enmity that subsisted 
between the two kingdoms, prevented either of them from altering 
or adding to the law. After the Israelites were carried captive into 
Assyria, other nations were placed in the cities of Samaria in their 
stead; and the Samaritans received the Pentateuch, either from the 
priest who was sent by order of the king of Assyria, to instruct them in 
the manner of the God of the land, 2 Kings xvii, 26, or severai years 
afterward from the hands of Manasseh, the son of Joiada the high 
priest, who was expelled from Jerusalem by Nehemiah, for marrying 
the daughter of Sanballat, the governor of Samaria ; and who was con- 
stituted, by Sanballat, the first high priest of the temple at Samaria. 
(Neh. vil, 28 ; Josephus Ant. Jud. lib. xi, c. 8 ; Bishop Newton’s Works, 
vol. i, p. 23.) Now, by one or both of these means, the Samaritans 
had the Pentateuch as well as the Jews; but with this difference, that 
the Samaritan Pentateuch was in the old Hebrew or Phenician charac- 
ters, in which it remains to this day; whereas the Jewish copy was 
changed into Chaldee characters, (in which it also remains to this day,) 
which were faier and clearer than the Hebrew, the Jews having learn. 
ed the Chaldee language during their seventy years abode in Babylon 
The jealousy and hatred which subsisted between the Jews and Sama 
ritans, made it impracticable for either nation to corrupt or alter the 
text in any thing of consequence without certain discovery ; and tie 
general agreement between the Hebrew and Samaritan copies of the 
Pentateuch, which are now extant, is such, as plainly demonstrates that 
the copies were’ originally the same. Nor can any better evidence be de. 
sired, that the Jewish Bibles have not been corrupted or interpolated, than 
this very book of the Samaritans ; which, after more than two thonsand 
years discord between the two nations, varies as little from the otler as 
any classic author in less tract of time has disagreed from itself by the 
unavoidable slips and inistakes of so many transcribers. (4) 


(4) Dr. Benriey’s Remarks on Freethinking, part i, remark 27, (vol. v, p. 144, 
of Bp. Ranpotrn’s Enchiridion Theologicum, 8vo. Oxford, 1792.) 


FIRST.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 137 


“« After the return of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity, the books 
of the law and the prophets were publicly read in their synagogues 
every Sabbath day, Acts xiii, 14, 15, 27; Luke iv, 17-20; which 
was an excellent method of securing their purity, as well as of enforcing 
the observation of the law. The Chaldee paraphrases and the transla- 
tion of the Old Testament into Greek, which were afterward made, were 
so many additional securities. ‘To these facts we may add, that the 
reverence of the Jews for their sacred writings is another guarantee for 
their integrity : so great, indeed, was that reverence, that, according to 
the statements of Philo and Josephus, (Philo, apud Euseb. de Prep. 
Evang. lib. viii, c. 2; Josephus contra Apion. lib. i, sec. 8,) they would 
suffer any torments, and even death itself, rather than change a single 
point or iota of the Scriptures. A law was also enacted by them, which 
denounced him to be guilty of inexpiable sin, who should presume to 
make the slightest possible alteration in their sacred books. The Jew- 
ish doctors, fearing to add any thing to the law, passed their own notions 
as traditions or explanations of it ; and both Jesus Christ and his apostles 
accused the Jews of entertaining a prejudiced regard for those traditions, 
but they never charged them with falsifying or corrupting the Scriptures 
themselves. 

“2. After the birth of Christ. For, since that event, the Old Testa- 
ment has been held in high esteem both by Jews and Christians. The 
Jews also frequently suffered martyrdom for their Scriptures, which they 
would not have done, had they suspected them to have been corrupted 
or altered. Beside, the Jews and Christians were a mutual guard upon 
each other, which must have rendered any material corruption impos- 
sible, if it had been attempted: for if such an attempt had been made 
by the Jews, they would have been detected by the Christians. The 
«accomplishment of such a design, indeed, would have been impracticable 
from the moral impossibility of the Jews (who were dispersed in every 
country of the then known world) being able to collect all the then 
existing copies, with the intention of corrupting or falsifying them. On 
che other hand, if any such attempt had been made by the Christians, 
it would assuredly have been detected by the Jews: nor could any such 
attempt have been made by any other man or body of men, without 
expcsure both by Jews and Christians. ‘To these considerations, it may 
pe added, that the admirable agreement of all the ancient paraphrases 
and versions, and the writings of Josephus, with the Old Testament as 
it is now extant, together with the quotations which are made.from it in 
the New Testament, and in the writings of all ages to the present time, 
forbid us to indulge any suspicion of any material corruption in the 
books of the Old Testament; and give us every possible evidence of 
which a subject of this kind is capable, that these books are now in our ~ 
hands genuine and unadulterated. 


138 THEOLUWICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


«3. Lastly, the agreement of all the manuscripts of the Old Testa- 
ment, (amounting to nearly eleven hundred and fifty,) which are known 
to be extant, is a clear proof of its uncorrupted preservation. These 
manuscripts, indeed, are not all entire ; some contain one part, and some 
another. But it is absolutely impossible that every manuscript, whether 
in the original Hebrew, or in any ancient version or paraphrase, should 
or could be designedly altered or falsified in the same passages, without 
detection either by Jews or Christians. ‘The manuscripts now extant 
are, confessedly, liable to errors and mistakes from the carel 2ssness, 
negligence, or inaccuracy of copyists; but they are not all uniformly 
incorrect throughout, nor in the same words or passages; but what is 
incorrect in one place is correct in another. Although the various 
readings, which have been discovered by learned men, who have applied 
themselves to the collection of every known manuscript of the Hebrew 
Scriptures, amount to many thousands, yet these differences are of so 
little real moment, that their laborious collations afford us scarcely any 
opportunities of correcting the,sacred text in important passages. So far, 
however, are these extensive and profound researches from being either 
trivial or nugatory, that we have in fact derived from them the greatest 
advantage which could have been wished for by any real friend of 
revealed religion ; namely, the certain knowledge of the agreement of 
the copies of the ancient Scriptures, now extant in their original lan. 
guage, with each other, and with our Bibles. (Bishop Tomutne’s Ele- 
ments of Christ, Theol. vol i, p. 31.) 

“ Equally satisfactory is the evidence for the integrity and uncorrupt- 
ness of the New Testament in any thing material. The testimonies, 
adduced in the preceding section in behalf of the genuineness and 
authenticity of the New Testament, are, in a great measure, applicable 
to show that it has been transmitted to us entire and uncorrupted. But, 
to be more particular, we remark, that the uncorrupted preservation of 
the books of the New Testament is manifest, 

“1. From their contents; for, so early as the two first centuries of 
the Christian era, we find the very same facts, and the very same doc 
trines universally received by Christians, which we of the present day 
believe on the credit of the New Testament. 

“2. Because a universal corruption of those writings was impossible, nor 
can the least vestige of such a corruption be found in history. They could 
nut be corrupted during the life of their authors ; and before their death, 
copies were dispersed among the different communities of Christians, who 
were scattered throughout the then known world. Within twenty years 
after the ascension, Churches were formed in the principal cities of the 
Roman empire ; and in all these Churches the books of the New Testa- 
ment. especially the four Gospels, were read as a part of their public 
worship, Just as the writings of Moses and the prophets were read in 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 139 


the Jewish synagogues. (5) Nor would the use of them be confined to 
public worship; for these books were not, like the Sybilline oracles, 
socked up from the perusal of the public, but were exposed to public 
investigation. When the books of the New Testament were first pub. 
lished to the world, the Christians would naturally entertain the highest 
esteem and reverence for writings that delivered an authentic and inspired 
history of the life and doctrines of Jesus Christ, and would be desirous 
©: possessing such an invaluable treasure. Hence, as we learn from 
unquestionable authority, copies were multiplied and disseminated as 
rapidly as the boundaries of the Church increased ; and translations were 
made into as many languages as were spoken by its professors, some 
of which remain to this day; so that it would very soon be rendered 
absolutely impossible to corrupt these books in any one important word 
or phrase. Now, it is not to be supposed, (without violating all proba- 
bility,) that all Christians should agree in a design of changing or cor- 
rupting the original books; and if some only should make the attempt, 
the uncorrupted copies would still remain to detect them. And sup- 
posing there was some error in one translation or copy, or something 
changed, added, or taken away ; yet there were many other copies and 
other translations, by the help of which the neglect or fraud might be 
or would be corrected. 

“Farther, as these books could not be corrupted during the life of 
their respective authors, and while a great number of witnesses were 
alive to attest the facts which they record: so neither could any mate- 
rial alteration take place after their decease, without being detected 
while the original manuscripts were preserved in the Churches. The 
Christians who were instructed by the apostles wr by their immediate 
successors, travelled into all parts of the world, carrying with them co- 
pies of their writings; from which other copies were multiplied and 
preserved. Now, as we have already seen, we have an unbroken series 
of testimonies for the genuineness and authenticity of the New Testa- 
ment, which can be traced backward, from the fourth century of the 
Christian era to the very time of the apostles: and these very testimo- 
nies are equally applicable to prove its uncorrupted preservation. 
Moreover, harmonies of the four Gospels were anciently constructed ; 
commentaries were written upon them, as well as upon the other bouks 
of the New Testament, (many of which are still extant,) manuscripts 
were collated, and editions of the New Testament were put forth. 
These sacred records, being universally regarded as the supreme stand- 
ard of truth, were received by every class of Christians with peculiar 


(5) Dr. Larpner has collected numerous instances in the second part of his Cre. 
dibility of the Gospel History ; references to which may be seen in the general 
index to his works, article Scriptures. See particularly the testimonies of Justin 
Martyr, Tertulliar, Origen, and Augustine 


140 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, [PART 


respect, as being Divine compositions, and possessing an authority be 
longing to no other books. Whatever controversies, therefore, arose 
among different sects, (and the Church was very early rent with fierce 
contentions on doctrinal points,) the Scriptures of the New Testament 
were received and appealed to by every one of them, as being conclu. 
sive in all matters of controversy : consequently it was morally impos. 
sible, that any man or body of men should corrupt or falsify them in any 
fundamental article, should foist into them a single expression to favour 
their peculiar tenets, or erase a single sentence, without being detected 
by thousands. 

“If any material alteration had been attempted by the orthodox, it 
would have been detected by the heretics ; and, on the other hand, if a 
heretic had inserted, altered, or falsified any thing, he would have been 
exposed by the orthodox, or by other heretics. It is well known that a 
division commenced in the fourth century, between the eastern and 
western Churches, which, about the middle of the ninth century, became 
irreconcilable, and subsists to the present day. Now, it would have . 
been impossible to alter all the copies in the eastern empire ; and if it 
had been possible in the east, the copies in the west would have detected 
the alteration. But, in fact, both the eastern and western copies agree, 
which could not be expected if either of them was altered or falsified. 
The uncorrupted preservation of the New Testament is farther evident, 

“3. From the agreement of all the manuscripts. ‘The manuscripts 
of the New Testament, which are extant, are far more numerous than 
those of any single classic author whomsoever; upward of three hun. 
dred and fifty were collected by Griesbach, for his celebrated critical 
edition. ‘These manuscripts, it is true, are not all entire: most of them 
contain only the Gospels; others, the Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, 
and the Epistles; and a few contain the Apocalypse or Revelation of 
John. But they were all written in very different and distant parts of 
the world; several of them are upward of twelve hundred years old, and 
give us the books of the New ‘Testament, in all essential points, per. 
fectly accordant with each other, as any person may readily ascertain 
by examining the critical editions published by Mill, Kuster, Bengel, 
Wetstein, and Griesbach. The thirty thousand various readings which 
are said to be found in the manuscripts collated by Dr. Mill, and the 
hundred and fifty thousand which Griesbach’s edition is said to contain, 
in no degree whatever affect the general credit and integrity of the text. 
In fact, the more copies are multiplied, and the more numerous the 
transcripts and translations from the original, the more likely is it, that 
the genuine text and the true original reading will be investigated and 
ascertained. ‘Ihe most correct and accurate ancient classics now extant 
are those of which we have the greatest number of manuscripts; and 
the most depraved, mutilated, and inaccurate editions of the old writers 


TLRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. J4). 


are those of which we have the fewest manuscripts, and perhaps only a 
single manuscript extant. Such are Athenaus, Clemens Romanus, He. 
sychius, and Photius. But of this formidable mass of various readings, 
which have been collected by the diligence of collators, not one tenth,— 
nay, not one hundredth part, either makes or can make any perceptible, 
or at Jeast any material, alteration in the sense in any modern version. 
They consist almost wholly of palpable errors in transcription, gramma- 
tical and verbal differences, such as the insertion or omission of an article, 
the substitution of a word for its equivalent, and the transposition of a_ 
word or two in a sentence. Even the few that do change the sense, 
affect it only in passages relating to unimportant, historical, and geogra 

phical circumstances, or other collateral matters; and the still smaller 
number that make any alteration in things of consequence, do not on 
that account place us in any absolute uncertainty. For, either the true 
reading may be discovered by collating the other manuscripts, versions, 
and quotations found in the works of the ancients; or, should these fail 
‘o give us the requisite information, we are enabled to explain the doc- 
‘rine in question from other undisputed passages of holy writ. 

“4, The last testimony to be adduced for the integrity and uncorrupt- 
ness of the New Testament, is furnished by the agreement of the ancient 
versions and quotations from it, which are made in the writings of the 
Christians of the first three centuries, and in those of the succeeding 
fathers of the Church. 

“The testimony of versions, and the evidence of the ecclesiastical 
fathers, have already been noticed as a proof of the genuineness and 
authenticity of the New Testament. The quotations from the New Tes- 
tament in the writings of the fathers are so numerous, that (as it has 
frequently been observed) the whole body of the Gospels and Epistles 
might be compiled from the various passages dispersed in their com- 
mentaries and other writings. And though these citations were, in many 
inst .nces, made from memory, yet, being always made with due atten- 
tion to the sense and meaning, and most commonly with a regard to the 
words as well as to the order of the words, they correspond with the 
original records from which they were extracted :—an irrefragable argu- 
ment this, of the purity and integrity with which the New Testament 
has been preserved.” (Hornn’s Introduction to the Critical Study and 
Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, vol. i, chap. 2, sect. 3.) 


CHAPTER XIV. 


Tuer CREDIBILITY OF THE TESTIMONY OF THE SACRED WRITERS. 


Tue proofs of the existence and actions of Moses and Christ, the © 
founders of the Jewish and Christian religions, having been adduced, 


.42 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. (PART 


with those of the antiquity and uncorrupted preservation of the records 
which profess to contain the facts of their history, and the doctrines 
they taught, the only question to be determined before we examine those 
miracles and prophecies on which the claim of the Divine authority of 
their mission rests, is, whether these records faithfully record the trans- 
actions of which they give us information, and on which the Divinity of 
both systems, the Jewish and the Christian, is built. To deny this be. 
cause we object to the doctrines taught, is equally illogical and perverse, 
as it is assuming the doctrine to be false before we have considered all 
the evidence which may be-adduced in its favour; to deny it because 
we have already determined to reject the miracles, is equally absurd and 
impious. It has already been proved, that miracles are possible ; and 
whether the transactions related as such in the Scriptures be really 
miraculous or not, is a subsequent inquiry to that which respects the 
faithful recording of them. If the evidence of this is insufficient, the 
examination of the miracles is unnecessary ; if it is strong and convine- 
ing, that examination is a subject of very serious import. 

We might safely rest the faithfulness of the Scriptural record upon 
the argument of Leslie, before adduced ; but, from the superabundance 
of evidence which the case furnishes, some amplifications may be added, 
which we shall confine principally to tue authors of the New Testa- 
ment. 

There are four circumstances which never fail to give credibility to 
a witness, whether he depose to any thing orally or in writing :— 

1. That he is a person of virtuous and sober character. 

2. That he was in circumstances certainly to know the truth of what. 
he relates. 

3. That he has no interest in making good the story. 

4. That his account is circumstantial. 

In the highest degree these guarantees of faithful and exact testimony 
meet in the evangelists and apostles. 

That they were persons of strict and exemplary virtue, must by all 
‘candid persons be acknowledged ; so much so, that nothing to the con- 
trary was ever urged against the integrity of their conduct by the most 
malicious enemies of Christianity, Avarice and interest could not sway 
them, for they voluntarily abandoned all their temporal connections, and 
embarked in a cause which the world regarded, to the last degree, as 
wretched and deplorable. Of their sincerity they gave the utmost proo. 
in the openness of their testimony, never affecting reserve, or shunning 
‘nquiry. They delivered their testim ny before kings and princes. 
priests and magistrates, in Jerusalem and Judea, where their Master 
lived and died, and in the most populous, inquisitive, and learned parts 
of the world, submitting its evidences to a fair and impartial examina. 
tion. 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 1433 


“Their minds were so penetrated with a conviction of the truth of the 
Gospel, that they esteemed it their distinguished honour and privilege to 
seal their attestation to it by their sufferings, and blessed God that they 
were accounted worthy to suffer reproach and shame for their profes- 
sion. Passing through honour and dishonour, through evil report and 
good report, as deceivers and yet true. Never dejected, never intimi- 
dated by any sorrows and sufferings they supported ; but when stoned, 
imprisoned, and persecuted in one city, flying to another, and there 
preaching the Gospel with intrepid boldness and heaven-inspired zeal. 
Patient in tribulation, fervent in spirit, rejoicing under persecution, calm 
and composed under calumny and reproach, praying for their enemies, 
when in dungeons cheering the silent hours of night with hymns of 
praise to God. Meeting death itself in the most dreadful forms with 
which persecuting rage could dress it, with a serenity and exultation the 
Store philosophy never knew. In all these public scenes showing to the 
world a heart infinitely above what men vulgarly style great and happy, 
infinitely remote from ambition, the lust of gold, and a passion for popu. 
lar applause, working with their own hands to raise a scanty subsistence 
for themselves that they might not be burdensome to the societies they 
had formed, holding up to all with whom they conversed, in the bright 
faithful mirror of their own behaviour, the amiableness and excellency 
of the religion they taught, and in every scene and circumstance of life 
distinguished for their devotion to God, their unconquered love for man- 
kind, their sacred regard for truth, their self government, moderation, 
humanity, sincerity, and every Divine, social, and moral virtue that can 
adorn and exalt a character. Nor are there any features of enthusiasm 
in the writings they have left us. We meet with no frantic fervours 
indulged, no monkish abstraction from the world recommended, no ma- 
ceration of the body countenanced, no unnatural institutions established, 
no vain flights of fancy cherished, no absurd and irrational doctrines 
taught, no disobedience to any forms of human government encouraged 
but all civil establishments and social connections suffered to remain it. 
the same state they were before Christianity. So far were the apostles 
from being enthusiasts, and instigated by a wild undiscerning religious 
phrenzy to rush into the jaws of death, when they might have honour 
ably and lawfully escaped it, that we find them, when they could, without 
wounding their consciences, legally extricate themselves from persecu- 
tion and death, pleading their privileges as Roman citizens, and appeal. 
ing > Cesar’s supreme jurisdiction.” (Harwoop’s Introduction to the 
New Testament.) 

As it was contrary to their character to attempt to deceive others, so 
they could not be deceived themselves. They could not mistake in the 
case of feeding of the five thousand, and the sudden healing of lepers, 
and lame and blind persons; they could not but know, whether he with 


44 THEOLOGICAL JNSTITUTES, JPaARr 


whom they conversed for forty days was the same Jesus, as he with 
vhom they had daily and familiar intercouse long before his crucifixion 
They could not mistake as to his ascension into heaven; as to the fact 
whether they themselves were suddenly endowed with the power of 
speaking in languages which they had never acquired; and whether 
they were able to work miracles, and to impart the same power te 
others. 

They were not only disinterested in their testimony ; but their inte 

esis were on the side of concealment. One of the evangelists, Mat. 
.hew, occupied a lucrative situation when called by Jesus, and was evi- 
Jently an opulent man; the fishermen of Galilee were at least in cir- 
cumstances of comfort, and never had any worldly inducement held 
out to them by their Master; Nicodemus was a ruler among the Jews ; 
Joseph of Arimathea “a rich man ;” and St. Paul, both from his edu- 
cation, connections, and talents, had encouraging prospects in life : but 
of himself, and of his fellow labourers, he speaks, and describes all the 
earthly rewards they obtained for testifying both to Jews and Greeks 
nat Jesus was the Christ,—“ Even unto this present hour we both hun- 
ger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain 
dwelling place ; we are made as the filth of the world, and are the of- 
scouring of all things unto this day.” Finally, they sealed their testi- 
mony in many instances with their blood, a circumstance of which they 
had been forewarned by their Master, and in the daily expectation of 
which they lived. From this the conclusion of Dr. Paley is irresistible, 
“These men could not be deceivers. By only not bearing testimony 
they might have avoided all their sufferings, and have lived quietly. 
Would men in such circumstances pretend to have seen what they never 
saw; assert facts of which they had no knowledge; go about lying, to 
teach virtue ; and though not only convinced of Christ’s being an im. 
postor, but having seen the success of his imposture in his crucifixion, 
yet persist in carrying it on, and so persist as to bring upon themselves, 
for nothing and with a full knowledge of the consequence, enmity and 
natred, danger and death ?” 

To complete the character of their testimony, it is in the highest de. 
gree circumstantial. We never find that forged or false accounts of 
things abound in particularities ; and where many particulars are related 
of time, place, persons, &c, there is always a strong presumption of 
truth, and on the contrary. Here the evidence is more than presumptive. 
The history of the evangelists and of the Acts of the Apostles is so ful 
_of reference to persons then living, and often persons of consequence, 
to places in which miracles and other transactions took place publicly 
and not in secret ; and the application of all these facts by the first pro. 
pagators of the Christian religion to give credit to its Divine authority 
was so frequent and explicit, and often so reproving to their opposers 


\ 


FIRST.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 145 


that if they had not been true they must have been contradicted + and 
if contradicted on good evidence, the authors must have been over- 
whelmed with confusion. This argument is rendered the stronger 
when it is considered that “ these things were not done in a corner,” 
nor was the age dark and illiterate and prone to admit fables. The 
Augustan age was the most learned the world ever saw. The love of 
arts, sciences, and literature, was the universal passion in almost every 
part of the Roman empire, where Christianity was first taught in its 
doctrines, and proclaimed in its facts; and in this inquisitive and dis. - 
cerning era, it rose, flourished, and established itself, with much resist- 
ance to its doctrines, but without being once questioned as to the truth 
of its historical facts. 

Yet how easily might they have been disproved had they been false— 
that Herod the Great was not the sovereign of Judea when our Lord was 
born—that wise men from the east did not come to be informed of the 
place of his birth—and that Herod did not convene the sanhedrim, to 
inguire where their expected Messiah was to be born—that the infants 
in Bethlehem were not massacred—that in the time of Augustus all 
Judea was not enrolled by an imperial edict—that Simeon did not take 
the infant in his arms and proclaim him to be the expected salvation of 
Israel, which is stated to have been done publicly in the temple, before 
all the people—that the numerous persons, many of whose names are 
mentioned, and some the relatives of rulers and centurions, were not 
miraculously healed nor raised from the dead—that the resurrection of 
Lazarus, stated to have been done publicly, near to Jerusalem, and him- 
self a respectable person, well known, did not occur—that the circum- 
stances of the trial, condemnation, and crucifixion of Christ, did not take 
place as stated by his disciples; in particular, that Pilate did not wash 
his hands before them and give his testimony to the character of our 
Lord ; that there was no preternatural darkness from twelve to three in 
the afternoon on the day of the crucifixion ; and that there was no earth- 
quake ; facts which if they did not occur could have been contradicted 
by thousands: finally, that these well-known unlettered men, the apostles, 
were not heard to speak with tongues by many who were present in the 
assembly in which this was said to take place. But we might select 
almost all the circumstances out of the four Gospels and the Acts of the 
Apostles, and show, that for the most part they were capable of being 
contradicted at the time when they were first published, and that the 
immense number of circumstances mentioned would in aftertimes have 
furnished acute investigators of the history with the means of detecting 
its falsehood had it not been indubitable, either by comparing the differ- 
ent relations with each other, or with some well authenticated facts of 
accredited collateral history. On the contrary, the small variations in 


the story of the evangelists are confirmations of their testimony, being 
Vox. I. 10 


116 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, [PARY 


in proof that there was no concert among them to impose upon the 
world, and they do not aflect in the least the facts of the history itself; 
while as far as collateral, or immediately subsequent history ha« given 
its evidence, we have already seen, that it is confirmatory of the exact- 
ness and accuracy of the sacred penmen. 

For all these reasons, the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments 
are to be taken as a faithful and uncorrupted record of the transactions 
they exhibit; and nothing now appears to be necessary, but that this 
record be examined in order to determine its claims to be admitted as 
the deposit of the standing revelations of the will of God to mankind. 
The evidence of the genuineness and authenticity of the books of which 
it is composed, at least such of them as is necessary to the argument, 
is full and complete ; and if certain of the facts which they detail are 
proved to be really. miraculous, and the prophecies they record are in 
the proper sense predictive, then, according to the principles before 
established, the conclusion must be, THAT THE DOCTRINES WHICH THEY 
ATTEST ARE Divine. This shall be the next subject examined ; minor 
objections being postponed to be answered in a subsequent chapter. 


CHAPTER XV. 
Tue Mrracies oF ScripTure. 


[rv has peen aready proved that niracles are possible, that they are 
appropriate, necessary, and satisfactory evidences of a revelation from 
God: and that, like other facts, they are capable of being authenticated 
by credible testimony. ‘These points having been established, the main 
questions before us are, whether the facts alleged as miraculous in the 
Old and New Testaments have a sufficient claim to that character, and 
whether they were wrought in confirmation of the doctrine and mission 
of the founders of the Jewish and Christian religions. 

That definition of a true miracle which we have adopted, may here 
be conveniently repeated :— 

A miracle is an effect or event contrary to the established constitution 
or course of things, or a sensible suspension or controlment of, or devia. 
tion from, the known laws of nature, wrought either by the immediate act, 
or by the concurrence, or by the permission of God, for the proof or evi 
dence of some particular doctrine, or in attestation of the authority of 
some particular person. | 

The force of the argument from miracles lies in this—that as such 
works are manifestly above human power, and as no created being can 
effect them, unless empowered by the Author of nature, when they are 
wrought for such an end as that mentioned in the definition, they are ta 


he 
(a 


FIRST.| THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 147 


be considered as authentications of a Divine mission by a special and 
sensible interposition of God himself. 

To adduce all the extraordinary works wrought by Moses and by 
Christ would be unnecessary. In those we select for examination, the 
miraculous character will sufficiently appear to bring them within our 
definition ; and it will be recollected that it has been already established 
that the books which contain the account of these facts must have been 
written by their reputed authors, and that had not the facts themselves 
occurred as there related, it is impossible that the people of the age in 
which the accounts of them were published coula have been brought to 
believe them. On the basis then of the arguments already adduced to 
prove these great points, it is concluded that we have in the Scriptures 
a true relation of the facts themselves. Nothing therefore remains but 
to establish their claims as mtracics. 

Out of the numerous miracles wrought by the agency of Moses we 
select, in addition to those before mentioned in chapter ix, the plague 
of DARKNEss. ‘Two circumstances are to be noted in the relation 
given of this event, Exodus x. It continued three days, and it afflicted 
the Egyptians only, for “all the children of Israel had light in their 
dwellings.” ‘The fact here mentioned was of the most public kind: 
and had it not taken place, every Egyptian and every Israelite could 
have contradicted the account. ‘The phenomenon was not produced by 
an eclipse of the sun, for no eclipse of that luminary can endure so long. 
Some of the Roman writers mention a darkness by day so great that 
persons were unable to know each other; but we have no historical 
account of any other darkness so long continued as this, and so intense, 
that the Egyptians “rose not up from their places for three days.” 
But if any such circumstance had again occurred, and a natural cause 
could have been assigned for it, yet even then the miraculous character 
of this event would rémain unshaken ; for to what but to a supernatural 
cause could the distinction made between the Israelites and the Egyptians 
be attributed, when they inhabited a portion of the same country, and 
when their neighbourhoods were immediately adjoining? Here then 
are the characters of a true miracle. The established course of natural 
causes and effects is interrupted by an operation upon that mighty 
element, the atmosphere.. That it was not a chance irregularity in 
nature, is made apparent from the effect following the volition of a man 
acting in the name of the Lord of nature, and from its being restrained 
by that to a certain part of the same country—“ Moses stretched out his 
hand,” and the darkness prevailed, every where but in the dwellings of 
his own people. The fact has been established by former arguments , 
and the fact being allowed, the miracle of necessity follows. 

The destruction of the First rorNn of the Egyptians may be next 
sonsidered. Here too are several circumstances to be carefully noted 


148 THEOLOGICAL LNSTITUTES. [PAR1 


This j1dgment was threatened in the presence of Pharaoh, before any of 
the other plagues were brougnt upon him and his people. The Israelites 
also were forewarned of it. They were directed to slay a lamb, 
sprinkle the blood upon their door posts, and prepare for their departure 
that same night. The stroke was inflicted upon the first born of the 
Egyptians only, and not upon any other part of the family—it occurred 
in the same hour—the first born of the Israelites escaped without ex. 
ception—and the festival of ‘the passover” was from that night insti. 
tuted in remembrance of the event. Such a festival could not in the 
nature of the thing be established in any subsequent age, in commemo- 
ration of an event which never occurred ; and if instituted at the time, 
the event must have taken place, for by no means could this large body 
of men have been persuaded that their first born had been saved and 
those of the Egyptians destroyed, if the facts had not been before their 
eyes. The history therefore being established, the miracle follows ; for 
the order of nature is sufficiently known to warrant the conclusion, that, 
if a pestilence were, to be assumed as the agent of this calamity, an 
epidemic disease, however rapid and destructive, comes not upon the 
threat of a mortal, and makes no such selection as the first born of 
every family. 

The miracle of dividing the waters of the Rep Sra has already been 
mentioned, but merits more particular consideration. In this event we 
observe, as in the others, circumstances which exclude all possibility of 
mistake or collusion. The’ subject of the miracle is the sea; the wit- 
nesses of it the host of Israel, who passed through on foot, and the 
Egyptian nation, who lost their king and his whole army. ‘The miracu- 
lous characters of the event are :—The waters are divided, and stand 
up on each side ;—the instrument is a strong east wind, which begins 
its operation upon the waters at the stretching out of the hand of Moses, 
and ceases at the same signal, and that at the precise moment when 
the return of the waters would be most fatal to the Egyptian pursuing 
army. 

It has, indeed, been asked whether there were not some ledges of 
rocks where the water was shallow, so that an army, at particular times, 
might pass over; and whether the Etesian winds, which blow strongly 
all summer from the northwest, might not blow so violently against the 
sea as to keep it back “on a heap.” But if there were any force in 
these questions, it is plain that such suppositions would leave the de. 
struction of the Egyptians unaccounted for. To show that there is no 
weight in them at all, let the place where the passage of the Red Sea 
was effected be first noted. Some fix it near Suez, at the head of the 
gulf; but if there were satisfactory evidence of this, it ought also to be 
taken into the account, that formerly the gulf extended at least twenty- 
five miles north of Suez, the place where it terminates af jresent. 


FIRS'Y.| THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 14y 


(Lord Valentia’s Travels, vol. iii, p. 344.) But the names of places 
as well as tradition, fix the passage about ten hours’ journey lower down, 
at Clysma, or the valley of Bedea. ‘The name given by Moses to the 
place where the Israelites encamped before the sea was divided, was 
Pihahiroth, which signifies “the mouth of the ridge,” or of that chain 
of mountains which line the western coast of the Red Sea; and as 
there is but one mouth of that chain through which an immense multi- 
tude of men, women, and children, could possibly pass when flying 
before their enemies, there can be no doubt whatever respecting the . 
situation of Pthahiroth; and the modern names of conspicuous places 
in its neighbourhood prove, that those, by whom such names were given, 
believed that this was the place at which the Israelites passed the sea in 
safety, and where Pharaoh was drowned. Thus, we have close by 
Pihahiroth, on the western side of the gulf, a mountain called Attaka, 
which signifies deliverance. On the eastern coast opposite is a head- 
land called Ras Musa, or “the Cape of Moses ;’’ somewhat lower, 
Harnam Faraun, “ Pharaoh’s Springs;” while at these places, the 
general name of the gulf ‘itself is Bahr-al-Kolsum, “the Bay of Sub. 
mersion,” in which there is a whirlpool called Birket Faraun, “the Pool 
of Pharaoh.” This, then, was the passage of the Israelites; and the 
depth of the sea here is stated by Bruce, who may be consulted as to 
these localities, at about fourteen fathoms, and the breadth at between 
three and four leagues. But there is no “ledge of rocks,” and as to 
the “ Etesian wind,” the same traveller observes, “If the Etestan wind 
blowing from the northwest in summer, could keep the sea as a wall, on 
the right, of fifty feet high, still the difficulty would remain of building 
the wall to the left, or to the north. If the Eteszan winds had done this" 
once, they must have repeated it many a time before or since, from the 
same causes.” ‘The, wind which actually did blow, according to the 
history, either as an instrument of dividing the waters, or, which is more 
probable, as the instrument of drying the ground, after the waters were 
divided by the immediate energy of the Divine power, was not a north 
wind, but an “east wind ;” and as Dr. Hales observes, “seems to be 
introduced by way of anticipation, to exclude the natural agency which 
might he afterward resorted to for solving the miracle ; for it is remark- 
able thut the monsoon in the Red Sea blows the summer half of the year 
from the north, and the winter half from the south, neither of which 
could produce the miracle in question.” 

The miraculous character of this event is, therefore, pat strongly 
marked An expanse of water, and that water a sea, of from nine to 
twelve miles broad, known to be exceedingly subject to agitations, is 
divided, and a wall of water is formed on each hand, affording a passage 
on dry land for the Israelites. The phenomenon occurs too just as the 
Egyptian hest are on the point cf overtaking the fugitives. and ceas«s at 


150 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, [PART 


the moment when the latter reach the opposite shore in safety, and 
when their enemies are in the midst of the passage, in the only position 
in which the closing of the wall of waters on each side could insure the 
entire destruction of so large a force !' 

The falling of the manna in the wilderness for forty years, is another 
unquestionable miracle, and one in which there could be neither mistake 
on the part of those who were sustained by it, nor fraud on the part of 
Moses. ‘That this event was not produced by the ordinary course of 
nature, is rendered certaifi by the fact, that the same wilderness has 
been travelled by individuals, and by large bodies of men, from the 
earliest ages to the present, but no such supply of food was ever met 
with, except on this occasion; and its miraculous character is farther 
marked by the following circumstances :—1. That it fell but six days in 
the week: 2. That it fell in such prodigious quantities as sustained three 
millions of souls: 3. That there fell a double quantity every Friday, to 
serve the Israelites for the next day, which was their Sabbath: 4. That 
what was gathered on the first five days of the week stank and bred 
worms, if kept above one day ; but that which was gathered on Friday 
kept sweet for two days: and 5, That it continued falling while the 
Israelites remained in the wilderness, but ceased as soon as they came 
out of it, and got corn to eat in the land of Canaan. (Universal fistory, 
]. 1, c. 7.) Let these very extraordinary particulars be considered, and 
they at once confirm the fact, while they unequivocally establish the 
miracle. No people could be deceived in these circumstances ; no per- 
son could persuade them of their truth, if they had not occurred; and 
the whole was so clearly out of the regular course of nature, as to mark 

unequivocally the interposition of God. ‘To the majority of the nume- 
- us miracles recorded in the Old Testament, the same remarks apply, 
and upon them the same miraculous characters are as indubitably im- 
pressed. If we proceed to those of Christ, the evidence becomes, if 
possible, more indubitable. ‘They were clearly above the power of 
either human agency or natural causes: they were public: they were 
such as could not admit of collusion or deception: they were performed 
under such circumstances as rendered it impossible for the witnesses arid 
reporters of them to mistake: they were often done in the presence of 
malignant, scrutinizing, and intelligent enemies, the Jewish rulers, who 
acknowledged the facts, but attributed them to an evil, supernatural 
agency ; and there is no interruption in the testimony, from the age in 
which they were wrought, to this day. It would be trifling with the 
reader to examine instances so well known in their circumstances, for the 
slightest recollection of the feeding of the multitudes in the desert ;—the 
healing of the paralytic, who, because of the multitude, was let down from 
the house top ;-—the instant cure of the withered hand in the synagogue, 
near Jerusalem, where the Pharisees vere “ watching our Lord whethe* 


fIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 151 


he would heal on the Sabbath day ;”—the raising from the dead of the 
‘daughter of Jairus, the widow’s son, and Lazarus; and many other in- 
stances of miraculous power,—will be sufficient to convince any ingenu- 
ous mind, that all the characters of real and adequately attested miracles 
meet in them. That great miracle, the resurrection of our Lord him- 
self from the dead, so often appealed to by the first teachers of his 
religion, may, however, be here properly adduced, with its convincing 
and irrefragable circumstances, as completing this branch of the 
external evidence. 

That it is a miracle in its highest sense for a person actually dead to 
raise himself again to life, cannot be doubted ; and when wrought, as 
the raising of Christ was, in attestation of a Divine commission, it 1s 
evidence of the most irrefragable kind. So it has been regarded by 
unbelievers, who have bent ail their force against it; and so it was 
regarded by Divine Providence, who rendered its proofs ample and indu- 
bitable in proportion to its importance. Let us, then, examine the cir- 
cumstances as recorded in the history. 

In the first place, the reality of Christ’s death is circumstantially 
and fully stated, though if no circumstantial evidence had been adduced, 
it is not to be supposed that they, who had sought his death with so 
much eagerness, would be inattentive to the full execution of the sentence 
for which they had clamoured. The execution was public; he was 
crucified with common malefactors, in the usual place of execution ; 
the soldiers brake not his legs, the usual practice when they would 
hasten the death of the malefactor, observing that he was dead already. 
His enemies knew that he had predicted his resurrection, and would 
therefore be careful that he should not be removed from the cross before 
death had actually taken place; and Pilate refused to deliver the body 
for burial until he had expressly inquired of the officer on duty, whether 
he were already dead. Nor was he taken away to an unknown or dis- 
tant tomb. Joseph of Arimathea made no secret of the place where 
he had buried him. It was in his own family tomb, and the Pharisees 
knew where to direct the watch which was appointed to guard the body 
against the approach of his disciples. The reality of the death of Christ 
is therefore established. 

2. But by both parties, by the Pharisees on the one part, and by the 
disciples on the other, it was agreed, that the body was missing, and that, 
in the state of death, it was never more seen! The sepulchre was made 
sure, the stone at the mouth being sealed, and a watch of sixty Roman 
soldiers appointed to guard it, and yet the body was not to be found. 
Let us see, then, how each party accounts for this fact. The disciples 
affirm, that two of their company, going early in the morning to the 
sepulchre to embalm the body, saw an angel descend and roll away the 
stone, sit upon it, and invite them to see the place where their Lord had 


152 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. . [PART 


lain, informing them that he was risen, and commanding them to tell the 
other disciples of the fact ;—that others went to the sepulchre, and found 
not the body, though the grave clothes remained ; that, at different times, 
he appeared to them, both separately and when assembled; that they 
conversed with him; that he partook of their food ; that they touched his 
body ; that he continued to make his appearance among them for nearly 
six weeks, and then, after many advices, finally led them out as far as 
Bethany, and, in the presence of them all, ascended into the clouds of 
heaven. This is the statement of the disciples. 

The manner in which the Jewish sanhedrim accounts for the absence 
of our Lord’s body from the sepulchre is, that the Roman soldiers having 
slept on their posts, the disciples stole away the corpse. We know of 
no other account. Neither in their earliest books nor traditions is there 
any other attempt to explain the alleged resurrection of Jesus. We 
ure warranted therefore in concluding, that the Pharisees had nothing 
but this to oppose to the positive testimony of the disciples, who also 
added, and published it to the world, that the Roman soldiers related to 
the Pharisees “all the things that were done,” the earthquake, the 
appearance of the angel, &c; but that they were bribed to say, “ His 
disciples came by night and stole him away, while we slept.” 

On the statement of the Pharisees we may remark, that though those 
who were not convinced by our Lord’s former miracles were in a state 
of mind to resist the impression of his resurrection, yet, in this attempt te 
destroy the testimony of the apostles, they fell below their usual subtlety 
in circulating a story which carried with it its own refutation. This, 
however, may be accounted for, from the hurry and agitation of the 
moment, and the necessity under which they were laid to invent some- 
thing to amuse the populace, who were not indisposed to charge them 
with the death of Jesus. Of this :t is clear that the Pharisees were 
apprehensive, “ fearing the people,” on this as on former occasions. 
This appears from the manner in which the sanhedrim addressed the 
apostles, Acts v, 28: “ Did we not straitly command you, that ye should 
not teach in this name? and behold you have filled Jerusalem with your 
doctrine, and INTEND TO BRING THIS MAN’S BLOOD upon us.” ‘The 
majority of the people were not enemies of Jesus, though the Pharisees 
were; and it was a mob of base fellows, and strangers, of which 
Jerusalem was full at the passover, who had been excited to clamour for 
his death. The body of the Jewish populace heard him gladly; great 
numbers of them had been deeply impressed by the raising of Lazarus, 
in‘the very neighbourhood of Jerusalem, and had in consequence accom- 
panied him with public acclamations, as the Messiah, into Jerusalem. 
These sentiments of the people of Jerusalem toward our Lord were 
transferred to the apostles ; for after Peter and John had healed the man 
at the gate of the temple, and refused to obey the council in keeping silen 


Sd 


FIRST. THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 153 


as to Christ, when the chief priests had “ farther threatened them, they 
wt them go, finding not how they might punish them BECAUSE OF THR 
PEOPLE.” 

It was in a state of considerable agitation, therefore, that this 
absurd and self-exposed rumour was hastily got up, and as hastily pub- 
lished. We may add, also, that it was hastily abandoned ; for it is remark- 
able, that it is never adverted to by the Pharisees in any of those legal 
processes instituted at Jerusalem against the first preachers of Christ as 


the risen Messiah, within a few days after the alleged event itself. — 


First, Peter and John are brought before their great council; then the 
whole body of the apostles twice; on all these occasions they affirm the fact 
of the resurrection, before the very men who had originated the tale of the 
stealing away of the body, and in none of these instances did the chief 
priests oppose this story to the explicit testimony of his disciples having 
seen, felt, and conversed with Jesus, after his passion. ‘This silence 
cannot be accounted for but on the supposition that, in the presence of 
the apostles at least, they would not hazard its exposure. If at any time 
the Roman guards could have been brought forward effectually to con- 


front the apostles, it was when the whole body of the latter were in cus-_ 


tody, and before the council, where indeed the great question at issue 
between the parties was, whether Jesus were risen from the dead or not. 
On the one part, the apostles stand before the rulers affirming the fact, 
and are ready to go into the detail of their testimony : the only testimony 
which could be opposed to this is that of the Roman soldiers, but not 
one of the sixty is brought up, and they do not even advert to the rumour 
which the rulers had proclaimed. On the contrary, one of them, 
Gamaliel, advises the council to take no farther proceedings, but to let 
the matter go on, for this reason, that if it were of men it would come 
to nought, but if of God, they could not overthrow it, and would be found 
to fight against God himself. Now it is plain that if the Pharisees 
themselves believed in the story they had put into the mouths of the 
Roman soldiers, no doctor of the law, like Gamaliel, would have given 
such advice, and equally impossible is it that the council should unani- 
mously have agreed to it. With honest proofs of an imposture in their 
hands, they could never thus have tamely surrendered the public to delr- 
siun and their own characters to infamy; nor, if they had, could they 
have put their non-interference on the ground assumed by Gamaliel 
The very principle of his decision supposes, that both sides acknow. 
edged something very extraordinary which might prove a work of 
God; and that time would make it manifest. It admitted in point of 
fact, that Jesus MIGHT BE RISEN AGAIN. The whole council, by 
adopting Gamaliel’s decision, admitted this possibility, or how could time 


show the whole work, built entirely upon this fact, to be a work of God, or 


not? And thus Gamaliel, without intending it, certainly, has afforded 


‘ 


154 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


evidence in favour of the resurrection of ~ur Lord the more powerful 
from its being incidental. | 

The absurdity involved in the only testimony ever brought agaist 
the resurrection of our Lord, rendered it indeed impossible to maintain 
the story. That a Roman guard should be found off their watch, or 
asleep, a fault which the military law of that people punished with 


deuth, was most incredible ; that, if they were asleep, the timid disciples 


of Christ should dare to make the attempt, when the noise of removing 
the stone and bearing away the body might awaken them, is very im- 
probable ; and, above all, as it has been often put, either the soldiers 
were awake or asleep—if awake, why did they suffer a few unarmed 
peasants and women to take away the body? and if asleep, how came 
they to know that the disciples were the persons ? 

Against the resurrection of Christ, we may then with confidence say, 
there is no testimony whatever; it stands, like every other fact in the 
evangelic history, entirely uncontradicted from the earliest ages to the 
present ; and though we grant that it does not follow, that, because we 
do not admit the account given of the absence of our Lord’s body from 
the sepulchre by the Jews, we must therefore admit that of the apostles, 
yet the very inability of those who first objected to the fact of the resur- 
rection to account for the absence of the body, which had been entirely 
in their own power, affords very strong presumptive evidence in favour of 
the statement of the disciples. Under such circumstances the loss of the 
body became itself an extraordinary event. The tomb was carefully 
closed and sealed by officers appointed for that purpose, a guard was set, 
and yet the body is missing. The story of the Pharisees does not at all 
account for the fact; it is too absurd to be for a moment credited ; and 
unless the history of the evangelists be admitted, that singular fact remains 
still unaccounted for. 

But in addition to this presumption, let the circumstances of credibility 
in the testimony of the disciples be collected, and the evidence becomes 
indubitable. 

The account given by the disciples was not even an improbable one , 
for allow the miracles wrought by Christ during his life, and the resur- 
rection follows as a natural conclusion ; for before that event can be 
maintained to be in the lowest sense improbable, the whole history of his 
public life, in opposition not to the evangelists merely, but, as we have 
seen, to the testimony of Jews and heathens themselves, must be proved 
to be a fable. 

“The manner in which this testimony is given, is in its favour. Su far 
from the evangelists having written in concert, they give an account of 
the transaction so varied as to make it clear that they wrote independ- 
ently of each other; and yet so agreeing in the leading facts, and so 
easily capable of reconcilement in those minute circumstances in which 


FIRST. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 155 


some discrepancy at first sight appears, that their evidénce in every part 
*arries with it the air of honesty and truth. 

Their own account sufficiently proves, that they were incredulous as 
.o the fact when announced, and so not disposed to be imposed upon by 
ar.imag.nation. This indeed was impossible ; the appearances of Christ 
were too numerous, and were continued for too long a time,—forty days. 
They could not mistake, and it is as ampossible that they should deceive ; 
impossible that upward of five hundred persons to whom Christ appeared, 
should have been persuaded by the artful few, that they had seen and _ 
conversed with Christ, or to agree, nut only without reward, but in 
renunciation of all interests and in hazard of all dangers and of death 
itself, to continue to assert a falsehood. 

Nor did a long period elapse before the fact of the resurrection was 
proclaimed ; nor was a distant place chosen in which to make the first 
report of it. These would have been suspicious circumstances ; but on 
the contrary the disciples testify the fact from the day of the resurrec- 
tion itself. One of them in a pubiic speech at the feast of pentecost, 
addressed to a mixed multitude, affirms it; and the same testimony is 
given by the whole college of apostles, before the great council twice : 
this too was done at Jerusalem, the scene of the whole transaction, and 
in the presence of those most interested in detecting the falsehood. 
Their evidence was given, not only before private but public persons,, 
before magistrates and tribunals, “ before philosophers and rabbies, be- 
fore courtiers, before lawyers, before people expert in examining and 
cross-examining witnesses,’ and yet what Christian ever impeached his 
accomplices? or discovered this pretended imposture? or was convicted 
of prevarication ? or was even confronted with others who could contra- 
dict him as to this or any other matter of fact relative to his religion? 
To this testimony of the apostles was added the seal of miracles, wrought 
as publicly, and being as unequivocal in their nature, as open to public 
investigation, and as numerous, as those of their Lord himself. The 
miracle of the gift of tongues was in proof of the resurrection and 
ascension of Jesus Christ ; and the miracles of healing were wrought by 
the apostles ir their Master’s name, and therefore were the proofs both 
of his resurrection and of their commission. Indeed, of the want of 
supernatural evidence the Jews, the ancient enemies of Christianity 
never complained. They allowed the miracles both of Christ and his 
apostles ; but by ascribing them to Satan, and regarding them as diabo- 
lical delusions and wouders wrought in order to seduce them from the 


law, their admissions are at once in proof of the truth of the Gospel 
history, and enable us to account for their resistance to an evidence so 


majestic and overwhelming. (6) 


(6) The evidences of our Lord’s resurrection are fully exhibited in Wrst on 


56 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES | PART 


CHAPTER XVI. 
OBJECTIONS TO THE PReor FROM MIRACLES CONSIDERED. 


Tix first objection to the conclusiveness of the argument in favour 
of the Mosaic and Christian systems which is drawn from their miracles, 
is grounded upon facts and doctrines SUPP Osea to be found in the Scrip. 
tures themselves. 

It is stated, that the Scriptures assert miraculous acts to have been 
performed in opposition to the mission and to the doctrine of those who 
have professed themselves accredited instruments of making known re- 
velations of the will of God to mankind; and that the sacred writers 
frequently speak of such events as possible, nay as certain future occur- 
rences, even when they have not actually taken place. The question 
therefore is, how miracles should be conclusive proofs of truth, when 
they actually have been, or may be wrought, in proof of falsehood. 
‘Shall a miracle confirm the belief of one, and not confirm the belief 
of more Gods than one, if wrought for that purpose?” (Bishop Fier. 
woop on Miracles.) ‘The instances usually adduced are the feats of the 
Egyptian magi in opposition to Moses, and the raising of Samuel by the 
witch of Endor. ‘The presumptions that such works are considered 
possibie, are drawn from a passage of Moses in the book of Deutero- 
nomy ; a prediction respecting false Christs in St. Matthew’s Gospel ; 
and the prediction of the man of sin, in the writings of St. Paul: all 
of which caution the reader against being seduced from the truth, by 
‘signs and wonders” performed by false teachers, 

With respect to the miracles, or pretended miracles, wrought by the 
magicians of Pharaoh, some preliminary considerations are to be noted. 

1. That whether the persons called magicians were regular priests 
or a distinct class of men, they were known to be expert in producing 
singular effects and apparent transformations in natural objects, for after 
Moses had commenced his marvellous operations, they were sent for by 
Pharaoh to oppose their power and skill to his. 

2. That they succeeded, or appeared to succeed, in three attempts 
to imitate the works of Moses, and were then controlled, or attempted a 
work beyond their power, and were obliged to acknowledge themselves 
vanquished by “the finger of God.” The rest of the miracles wrought 
by Moses went on without any attempt at imitation. 

3. ‘That these works of whatever kind they might be, were wrought 
to hold up the idols of Egypt as equal in power to Jehovah, the God of 
Moses and the Israelites. This 1s a consideration of importance, and 


the Resurrection, SHertockx’s Trial of the Witnesses, and Dr. Cook’s [llustration 
of thie Evidence of Christ’s Resurrection. 


FIRST. } THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 137 


the fact is easily proved. If they were mere jugglers and performed 
their wonders by sleight of hand, they did not wish the people to know 
jhis, or their influence over them could not have been maintained. 
They therefore used “ enchantments,” incongruous and strange cere- 
monies, rites and offerings, which among all superstiticus people have 
been supposed to have a powerful effect in commanding the influence 
of supernatural beings in their favour and subjecting them to their will. 
We have an instance of this use of “ enchantments” in the case of Ba- 
laarn, who lived in the same age; and this example goes very far, we - 
think, to settle the sense in which the magi used “ enchantments ;” for 
though the original word used is different, yet its ideal meaning is 
equally capable of being applied to the rites of incantation, and in this 
sense it is confirmed by the whole story. (7) Whatever connection 
therefore may be supposed to exist between the ‘ enchantments” used 
and the works performed, or if all connection be denied, this species of 
religious rite was performed, and the people understood, as it was 
intended they should understand, that the wonders which the magi per- 
formed were done under the influence of their deities. The object of 
Pharaoh and the magicians was to show, that their gods were as power- 
ful as the God who had commissioned Moses, and that they could pro- 
tect them from his displeasure, though they should refuse at the command 
of his commissioned servant to let his people go. 

But whatever pretence there was of supernatural assistance, it is con- 
tended by several writers of yreat and deserved authority, that no 
miracles were wrought at all on these occasions; that, by dexterity and 
previous preparation, serpents were substituted by the magicians for 
rods; that a colouring matter was infused into a portion of water; and 
that as frogs, through the previous miracle of Moses, every where 
abounded in the land of Egypt, a sufficient number might be easily pro- 
cured to cover some given space; and they farther argue, that when 
the miracles of Moses became such as to defy the possibility of the 
most distant imitation, at that point the simulations of the magi ceased. 

The obvious objection to this is, that “ Moses describes the works of 
the magicians in the very same language as he does his own, and there. 
fore there is reason to conclude that they were equally miraculous.” 


(7) ‘* They also did in like manner with their enchantments. The word cons, 
lahatim, comes from wa, lahat, to burn, to set on fire; and probably signifies 
such incantations as required lustral fires, sacrifices, fumigations, burning of in. 
cense, aromatic, and odoriferous drugs, §-c, as the means of evoking departed 
spirits, or assistant demons, by whose ministry, it is probable, the magicians in 
yuestion wrought some of their deceptive miracles: for as the term miracle pro- 
perly signifies something which exceeds the power of nature or art to produce, 
(see verse 9;) hence there could be no miracle in this case, but those wrought 
through the power of God, by the ministry ¢f Moses and Aaron.” (Dr. Abas 
CxarkE in loc.) “ 


198 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, | [PART 


To this it is replied, that nothing is more common than to speak of pro- 
fessed jugglers as doing what they pretend or appear to do, and that 
this language never misleads. But it is also stated, and the observation 
is of great weight, that the word used by Moses is one of great latitude 
—<“they pip so,” that is, in like manner, importing that they attempted 
some imitation of Moses; because it is used when they failed in their 
attempt—“ they pip so to bring forth lice ; but they could not.” Farther, 
Mr. Farmer, Dr. Hales, and others, contend, that the root of the word 
translated ‘‘ enchantments” fitly expresses any “ secret artifices or me- 
thods of deception, whereby false appearances are imposed upon the 
spectators.” For a farther explanation and defence of this hypothesis, 
an extract from Farmer’s Dissertation on Miracles is given, at the end 
of the chapter. (8) 

Much as these observations deserve attention, it may be very much 
doubted, whether mere manual dexterity and sleight of hand can suffi- 
ciently account for the effects actually produced, if only human agents 
were engaged; and it does not appear impracticable to meet any diffi- 
culty which may arise out of an admission of supernatural evil agency 
in the imitation of the three first wonders performed by Moses. 

It ought however in the first place to be previously stated, that the 
history before us is not in fairness to be judged of as an insulated state- 


ment, independent of the principles and doctrines of the revelation in _ 


which it is found. With that revelation it is bound up, and by the light 
-f its doctrine it is to be judged. No infidel, who would find in Serip- 
ture an argument against Scripture, has the right to consider any pas- 
sage separately, or to apply to it the rule of his own theory on religious 
subjects, unless he has first, by fair and honest argument, disposed of 
the evidences of the Scriptures themselves. He must disprove the 
authenticity of the sacred record, and the truth of the facts contained in 
it,—he must rid himself of every proof of the Divine mission of Moses, 
and of the evidence of his miracles, before he is entitled to this right ; 
and if he is inadequate to this task, he can only consider the case as a 
difficulty, standing on the admission of the Scriptures themselves, and to 
be explained, as far as possible, on the principles of that general system 
of religion which the Scriptures themselves supply. In this nothing 
more is asked, than argumentative fairness. The same rule is still more 
obligatory upon those interpreters who profess to believe in the Divine 


authority of the sacred records; for by the aid of their general prin- 


ciples and unequivocal doctrines, every difficulty which they profess to 

extract from them, is surely to be examined in order to ascertain its real 

character. What, however, is the real difficulty in the present case, 

supposing it to be allowed that the magicians performed works superior 

to the power of any mere human agent, and therefore supernatural ? 
(8) See note A at the end of the chapter. 


a 
G 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. _ 159 


This it is the more necessary to settle, as the difficulty supposed to arise 
vut of this admission has been exaggerated. 

It seems generally to have been supposed, that these counter per- 
formances were wrought to contradict the Divine mission of Moses, and 
that by allowing them to be supernatural, we are brought into the diffi- 
culty of supposing, that God may authenticate the mission of his servants 
by miracles, and that miracles may be wrought also to contradict this 
attestation, thus leaving us in a state of uncertainty. This view is mot 
however at all countenanced by the history. No intimation is given 
that the magicians performed their wonders to prove that there was no 
such God as Jehovah, or that Moses was not commissioned by him. 
For as they did not deny the works of Moses to be really performed, 
they could no more deny that he did them by the power of his God, ° 
than they would deny that they themselves performed their exploits by 
the assistance of their gods,—a point which they doubtless wished to 
impress upon Pharaoh and the people, and for which both were prepared 
by their previous belief in their idols, and in the effect of incantations, 
For to suppose that Pharaoh sent tor men to play mere juggling tricks, 
knowing them to be mere jugglers, seems too absurd to be for a moment 
admitted, except indeed, as some have assumed, that he thought the 
works of Moses to be sleight-of-hand deceptions, which he might ex- 
pose by the imitations of his own jugglers. But nothing of this is even 
hinted at in the history, and at least the second work of Moses was such 
as entirely to preclude the idea—the water became blood throughout the 
whole land of Egypt. It was not intended by these works of the Egyp- 
tian magi, to oppose the existence of Jehovah, for there was nothing in 
polytheism which required it to be denied, that every people had their 
own local divinities—nothing indeed which required its votaries to dis. 
allow the existence of even a Supreme Deity, the “ Father of gods and 
men ;” and that Moses was commissioned by this Jehovah, “the God 
of the Hebrews,” to command Pharaoh to let hts people go, was in point 
of fact acknowledged, rather than denied, by allowing his works, and 
attempting to imitate them. The argument upon their own principles 
was certainly as strong for Moses, as for the Egyptian priests. If their 
extraordinary works proved them the-servants of their gods, the works 
of Moses proved him to be the servant of his God. 

Thus in this series of singular transactions was there no evidence 
from counter miracles, even should it be allowed that real miracles were 
wrought, to counteract or nullify the mission of Moses, or to deny the 
existence or even to question any of the attributes of the true Jehovah. 
All that can be said is, that singular works, which were intended to 
pass for miraculous ones, were wrought, not to disprove any thing 
which Moses advanced, but to prove that the Egyptian deities had - 
power equal to the God of the Jews; and in which contest their votaries 


160 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PARI 


ultimately failed—that pretension being abundantly refuted by the tran- 
scendent nature and number of the works of Moses; ana by their being 
“plagues,” from which the objects of their idolatry could not deliver 
them, and which, indeed, as the learned Bryant has shown, were 
intended expressly to humble idolatry itself, and put it to open and bit- 
ter shame. 

If in this instance we see nothing to contravene the evidence of 
tniracles, as attestations of the Divine commission of Moses, so in ne 
other case recorded in Scripture. The raising of the spirit of Samuc] 
by the witch of Endor, is indeed the only instance of any thing ap- 
proaching to miraculous agency ascribed to an evil spirit, unless we 
add the power exercised by Satan over Job, and his bearing our Lord 
through the air, and placing him upon an exceeding high mountain. But 
whether these events were properly speaking miraculous, may be more 
than doubted ; and if they were, neither they, nor the raising of Samuel 
profess to give any evidence in opposition to the mission uf any servant 
of God, or to the doctrines taught by him. On the contrary, so far are 
the Scriptures from affording any examples of miracles, either real or 
simulated, wrought in direct opposition to the mission and theological 
doctrine of the inspired messengers of God in any age, that in cases 
where the authority of the messenger was fairly brought into question, 
the examples are of a quite different kind. Elijah brought the matter 
to issue, whether Jehovah or Baal were God; and while the priests of 
Baal heard neither “ voice nor sound” in return to all their prayers, the 
God of Israel answered his own prophet by fire, and by that ratified his 
servant’s commission and his own Divinity before all Israel. The 
devils in our Lord’s days confessed him to be the Son of the most high 
God. ‘The damsel possessed with a spirit of divination at Thyatira, 
gave testimony to the mission of the Apostle Paul and his companions. 
We read of no particular acts performed by Elymas the sorcerer ; but, 
whatever he could perform, when he attempted to turn away Sergius 
Paulus from the faith he was struck blind. And thus we find that Scrip- 
ture does no where represent miracles to have been actually wrought in 
contradiction of the authority of any whom God had commissioned to 
teach his will to mankind. 

But that the Scriptures assume this as possible, is argued from Deut. 
xill, 1, &c,—where the people are commanded not to follow a prophet 
or dreamer of dreams, who would entice them into idolatry, thovgh he 
should give them “a sign or wonder, and the sign or wonder come to 
pass.” Here, however, it appears, that not a miracle, but a prophecy 
of some wonderful event is spoken of: for this sign or wonder was to 
come to pass. Nor can the prediction be considered as more than 
some shrewd and accidental guess, either from himself, or by the assist. 
ance of some evil supernatural agency, (a subject we shall just now 


* 


FIRST. THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 16] 


consider,) but in fact, falling short, though in some respects wonderful, 
of a true prediction; because in the eighteenth chapter of this same 
Xook, the fulfilment of the words of a prophet is made the conclusive 
proof of his Divine commission, nor can we suppose the same writer 
within the distance of a few sentences to contradict himself. 

In Matthew xxiv, 24, it is predicted that false Christs and false pro- 
phets shall arise and show “ great signs and wonders,” calculated to de- 
ceive men, though not “ the elect.” And in 2 Thess. ii, 8 and 9, the 
coming of the man of sin is said to be “ after the working of Satan with - 
all power, and signs, and lying wonders.”’ The latter prediction refers un 
questionably to the papacy, and to works wrought to lead men from the 
true interpretation of the Gospel, though not to annul in the least the 
Divine authority of Christ and his apostles ;_ the former supposes works 
which, as being wrought by false Christs, are opposed to the commission 
of our Lord, and is indeed the only instance in which a direct contest 
between the miracles which attest the authority of a Divine messenger, 
and “ great signs and wonders” wrought to attest an opposing and con- 
tradictory authority, is spoken of. What these “signs and wonders’ 
may be, it is therefore necessary to ascertain. 

In the Thessalonians they are ascribed to the “ working of Satan,” 
and in order to bring the general principles of the revelation of the 
Scriptures to bear upon these, its more obscure and difficult parts, a 
rule to which we are in fairness bound, it must be observed, 

1. That the introduction of sin into the world is ascribed to the 
malice and seductive cunning of a powerful evil spirit, the head and 
leader of innumerable others. 2. That when a Redeemer was pro- 
mised to man, that promise, in its very first annunciation, indicated a 
long and arduous struggle between uim and these evil supernatural 
agents. 3. That it is the fact, that a powerful contest has been main. 
tained in the world ever since, between truth and error, idolatry, super- 
stition, and will worship, and the pure and authorized worship of the 
true God. 4. That the Scriptures uniformly represent the Redeemer 
and Restorer at the head of one party of men in the struggle, and 
Satan at the head of the other; each making use of men as their 
instruments, though consistently with their general free agency. 5 
That almighty God carries on his purposes to win man back to obe- 
dience to him, by the exhibition of truth, with its proper evidences; Ly 
commands, promises, threats, chastisements, and final punishments, 
and that Satan opposes this design by exhibitions of error, and false 
religion, gratifying to the corrupt passions and appetites of men; and 
especially seeks to influence powerful agents among men to seduce 
others by their example; and to destroy the truth by persecution and 
force. 6 That the false religions of the heathen, as well as the cor- 
ruptions of Christianity, took place under this diabolical influence ; and 


Vou. I. 


* 


162 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES |PART 


that the .dols of the heathen were not only the devices of devils, but 
often devils themselves, (9) made the objects of the worship of men, 
either for their wickedness or their supposed power to hurt. (1) 

Now as the objection which we are considering is professedly taken 
from Scripture, its doctrine on this subject must be explained by itself, 
and for this reason the above particulars have been introduced ; but the 
inquiry must go farther. These evil spirits are in a state of hostility 
to the truth, and oppose it by endeavouring to seduce men to erroneous 
opinions, and a corrupt worship. ll their power may therefore be 
expected to be put forth in accomplishment of their designs; but to 
what does their power extend? ‘This is an important question, and the 
Scriptures afford us no small degree of assistance in deciding it. 

1. They can perform no work of creation ; for this throughout Serp- 
ture is constantly attributed to God, and is appealed to by him as the 
proof of his own Divinity in opposition to idols, and to all beings what. 
ever—“ Tv whom will ye liken me, or shall I be equal, saith the Holy 
One? Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these 
things.” ‘This claim must of necessity cut off from every other being 
the power of creating in any degree, that is, of making any thing out of 
nothing ; for a being possessing the power to create an atom out of 
nothing, could not want the ability of making a world. Nay, creation, 
in its lower sense, is in this passage denied to any but God; that is, the 
forming goodly and perfect natural objects, such as the heavens and the 
earth are replenished with, from a pre-existent matter, as he formea 
all things from matter unorganized and chaotic. No ‘ sign,” therefore, 
no “wonder” which implies creation, is possible to finite beings; and 
whatever power any of them may have over matter, it cannot extend to 
any act of creation. 

2. Life and death are out of the power of evil spirits. ‘The domi- 
nion of these is so exclusively claimed by God himself in many passages 
of Scripture which are familiar, that they need not be cited,—“ Unto God 
the Lord belong the issues from death”—*«I kill, and I make alive 
again.” No “signs or wonders,” therefore, which imply dominion 


(9) Some of the demons worshipped by heathens had a benevolent reputation, 
and these were no doubt suggested by the tradition of good angels; others were 
malignant, and were none other than the evil angels, devils, handed down by 
the same tradition. Thus Plutarch says, ‘‘ It has been a very ancient opinion, 
that there are malevolent dernons, who envy good men, and oppose them in their 
actions,” &c. 

(1) The passion of Satan to be worshipped appears strongly marked in our 
Lord’s temptation : “‘ All these will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and wor. 
ship me.” In all ages evil and sanguinary beings have been deified. It was so 
in the time of Moses, and remains so to this day in Inaia and Africa, where 
devjl worship is openly professed. In Ceylon nothing is more common; and in 
many parts of Africa every village has its devil house. 


FIRST.} THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. me t63 


over these,—the power to produce a living being, or to give life to the 
dead,—are within the power of evil spirits; these are works of God, 

3. The knowledge of future events, especially of those which depena 
on free or contingent causes, is not attainable by evil spirits. This is 
the property of God, who founds upon it the proof of his Deity, 
and therefore excludes it from all others: ‘Show the things that are to 
come hergafter, that we may know that ye are gods,” Isa. xl, 25, 26 ; 


xli, 23. They cannot therefore utter a prediction in the strict and — 


prover sense ; though from their great knowledge of human affairs, and 
their long habits of observation, their conjectures may be surprising, and 


often accomplished, and so if uttered by any of their servants may have: 


in some cases the appearance of prophecies. 

4. They do not know certainly the thoughts and characters of men. 
“That,” as St. Augustine observes, “they have a great facility in dis- 
covering what is in the minds of men by the least external sign they 
give of it, and such as the most sagacious men cannot perceive,” and 
that they may have other means of access too to the mind beside these 
external signs; and that a constant observation of human character, to 
which they are led by their favourite work of temptation, gives them 
great insight into the character and tempers and weakness of indivi- 
duals, may be granted; but that the absolute, immediate, infallible 
knowledge of the thoughts and character belongs alone to God, is 
clearly the doctrine of Scripture: it is the Lord “who searcheth the 
heart,” and “knoweth what is in man ;” and in Jeremiah vii, 9, 10, the 
knowledge of the heart is attributed exclusively to God alone. 

Let all these things then be considered, and we shall be able to 
ascertaim, at least in part, the limits within which this evil agency is 
able to operate in opposing the truth, and in giving currency to false- 
hood ; at least we shall be able to show, that the Scriptures assign no 
power to this “working of Satan” to oppose the truth by such “ signs 
and wonders” as many have supposed. In no instance can evil spirits 
oppose the truth, we do not say by equal, or nearly equal miracles and 
prophecies, but by real ones—of both, their works are but simulations. 
We take the case of miracles. A creature cannot create; this is the 
doctrine of Scripture, and it will serve to explain the wonders of the 
Egyptian magi. They were, we think, very far above the sleight of hand 
of mere men unassisted ; and we have seen, that as idolatry is diabolic, 
and even is the worship of devils themselves, and the instrument of their 
opposition to God, the Scriptures suppose them to be exceedingly active 
in its support. It is perfectly accordant with this principle, therefore, 
to conclude, that Pharaoh’s priests had as much of the assistance of the 
demons whose ministers they were, as they were able to exert. But 
then the great principles we have just deduced from Scripture, oblige us 
to limit this power. It was not a power of working real miracles. but 


2 


164 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. IPART 


of simulating them in order to uphold the credit of idolatry. Now the 
three miracles of Moses which were simulated, all involved a creating 
energy. A serpent was created out of the matter of the rod; the frogs, 
from their immense multitude, appear also to have been created; and 
blood was formed out of the matter of water. But in the imitations of 
the magi, there was no creation: we are forbidden by the doctrine of 
Scripture to allow this, and therefore there must have been deception 
and the substitution of one thing for another; which, though performed 
in a manner apparently much above human adroitness, miglit be very 
much within the power of a number of invisible and active spirits. 
Serpents, in a country where they abound, might be substituted for rods ; 
frogs, which, after they had been brought upon the land by Moses, were 
numerous enough, might be suddenly thrown upon a cleared place ; and 
the water, which could only be obtained by digging, for the plague of 
Moses was upon all the streams and reservoirs, and the quantity being 
in consequence very limited, might by their invisible activity be easily 
mixed with blood or a colouring matter. In all this there was something 
of the imposture of the priests, and much of the assistance of Satan ; 
but in the strict sense no miracle was wrought by either, while the 
vorks of Moses were, from their extent, unequivocally miraculous. 

For the reasons we have given, no apparent miracles wrought in 
support of falsehood, can for a moment become rivals of the great 
miracles by which the revelations of the Scripture are attested. For 
instance, nothing like that of feeding several thousands of people with a 
few loaves and fishes can occur, for that supposes creation of the matter 
and the form of bread and fish; no giving life to the dead, for the 
“issues from death” belong exclusively to God. Accordingly we find 
in the “ signs and wonders” wrought by the false prophets and Christs 
predicted in Matthew, whether we suppose them mere impostors, or the 
immediate agents of Satan also, nothing of this decisive kind to attest 
their mission. 'THreupas promised to divide Jordan, and seduced many 
to follow him; but he was killed by the Roman troops before he could 
perform his miracle. . Another promised that the walls of Jerusalem 
should fall down; but his followers were also put to the sword by Felix. 
The false Christ, BarcnocuEsa, raised a large party ; but no miracles. 
of his are recorded. Another arose, A. D. 434, and pretended to divide 
the sea ; but hid himself after many of his besotted followers had plunged 
into it, in faith that it would retire from them, and were drowned. 
Many other false Christs appeared at different times; but the most note2 
was SapBarTal Sevi, in 1666. The delusion of the Jews with respect 
to him was very great. Many of his followers were strangely affected, 
prophesied of his greatness, and appeared by their contortions to be 
under some supernatural influence; but the grand seignior having 
apprehended Sabbatai, gave him the choice of proving his Messiahship, 


. 


FIRST.) THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, 165 


by suffering a body of archers to shoot at him; after which, if he was 
not wounded, he would acknowledge him to be the Messias; or, if he 
declined this, that he should be impaled, or turn Turk. He chose the 
szatter, and the delusion was dissipated. 

Now whatever “ signs or wonders” may be wrought by any of these, 
it is clear from the absence of all record of any unequivocal mira:le, 
that they were either illusions or impostures. 

The same course of remark applies to prophecy. To know the 
future certainly, is the special prerogative of God. The false prophet 
anticipated by Moses in Deuteronomy, who was to utter wonderful pre- 
dictions which should “ come to pass,” is not therefore to be supposed 
to utter predictions strictly and truly, as founded upon an absolute know- 
ledge of the future. A shrewd man may guess happily in some 
instances, and his conjectures when accomplished may appear to be “a 
sign and a wonder,” to a people willing to be deceived, because loving 
the idolatry to which he would lead them. Still farther, the Scripture 
doctrine does not discountenance the idea of an evil supernatural agency 
“working” with him; and then the superior sagacity of evil spirits 
may give to his conjectures, founded upon their own natural foresight 
of probabilities, a more decided air of prophecy, and thus aid the wicked 
purpose of seducing men from God’s worship. Real and unequivocal 
prophecy is however impossible to them, and indeed we have no 
instance of any approach to it among the false prophets recorded in the 
Jewish history. The heathen oracles may afford us also a comment on 
this. They were exceedingly numerous; many of them were highly 
celebrated ; all professed to reveal the future ; some wonderful stories 
are recorded of them; and it is difficult to refer the whole to the impos- 
ture of priests, though much of that was ultimately detected. That 
they kept their credit for two thousand years, and were silenced by the 
spread of the Gospel, and that, almost entirely, before the time of the 
establishment of Christianity by Constantine, as acknowledged by hea- 
then authors themselves—that they were in many instances silenced by 
individual Christians, is openly declared in the apologies of the Chris- 
tian fathers, so that the Pythonic inspiration could never be renewed— 
these are all strong presumptions at least, that, in this mockery of the 
Oracle of Zion, this counterfeit of the standing evidence given by pro- 
phecy to truth, there was much of diabolical agency, though greatly 
mingled with imposture. (2) Nevertheless, the ambiguity and obscurity 
by which the oracles sported with the credulity of the heathen, and 
miserably seduced them, often to the most diabolical wickednesses, and 
yet, in many cases, whatever might happen, preserved the appearance 


(2) This subject is acutely and learnedly discussed in ‘‘ An Answer to M. de 
Fontenelle’s History of Oracles, translated from the French by a Priest of the 
Church of England.” 


* 


* 


166 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


of having told the truth, sufficiently proved the want of a certain and 
clear knowledge of the future; and, upon the showing of their own 
Writers, nothing was ever uttered by an oracle which, considered as 
prophecy, can be for a moment put in comparison with the least remark 
able of those Scripture predictions which are brought forward in prot 
of the truth of the Scriptures. When they are brought into compart 
son, the most celebrated of them appear contemptible. (3) We may 
then very confidently conclude, that as Scripture no where represents 
any “ signs or wonders” as actually wrought to contradict the evidence 
of the Divine commission of Moses, of Christ and his apostles; so in 
those passages in which it supposes that they may occur, and predicts 
that they will be wrought in favour of falsehood, and, in the case of the 
false Christs, in opposition to the true Messiah, they do not give any 
countenance to the notion, that either real miracles can be wrought, or 
real predictions uttered, even by the permission of God, in favour of 
falsehood: for no permission, properly speaking, can be given to any 
being to do what he has not the natural power to effect; and permis- 
sion in this case, to mean any thing, must imply that God himself 
wrought the miracles, and gave the predictions, through the instrumen- 
tality of a creature it is true, but in fact that he employed his Divine 
power in opposition to his own truth,—a dishonourable thought which 
cannot certainly be maintained. His permission may however extend 
-to a license to evil men, and evil spirits too, to employ, against the truth 
and for the seduction of men, whatever natural power they possess. 
This is perfectly consistent with the general doctrine of Scripture ; but 
this permission is granted under rule and limit. Thus the history of Job 
is highly important, as it shows that evil spirits cannot employ their 
power against a good man without express permission. An event in the 
history of Jesus teaches also that they cannot destroy even an animal 
of the vilest kind, a swine, without the same license. Moral ends tou 
were to be answered in both cases—teaching the doctrine of Providence 
to future generations by the example of Job; and punishing the Ga- 
darenes in their property for their violation of the law through covet- 
ousness. So entirely are these invisible opposers of the truth and plans 
of Christ under control; and as moral ends are so explicitly marked m 
these instances, they may be inferred as to every other, where permis. 
sion to work evil or injury is granted. In the cases indeed before us, 
such moral purposes do not entirely rest upon inference; but are made 
evident from the history. The agency of Satan was permitted in sup- 
port of idolatry in Egypt, only to make the triumph of the true God 
over idols more illustrious, and to justify his severe judgments upon the 
Egyptians. The false prophets anticipated in Deuteronomy were per- 


(3) Sce note B at the end of the chapter. 


FIRST.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 167 


mitted, as it is stated, in order “to prove the people.” A new circum. 
stance of trial was introduced, which would lead them to compare the 
pretended predictions of the false prophet with the illustrious and well- 
sustained series of splendid miracles by which the Jewish economy had 
been established,—a comparison which could not fail to confirm rational 
and virtuous men in the truth, and to render more inexcusable those 
-ight and vain persons who might be seduced. This observation may 
also be applied to the case of the false Christs. In certain of these 
cases there is also something judicial. When men have yielded them- 
selves so fur to vice, as to seek error as its excuse, it seems a principle 
of the Divine government to make their sin their punishment. The 
Egyptians were besotted with their idolatries; they had rejected the 
clearest evidences of the truth, and were left to the delusions of the 
demons they worshipped. The Israelites, in those parts of their history 
to which Moses refers, were passionately inclined to idolatry; they 
wished any pretence or sanction for it, and were ready to follow every 
seducer. What they sought, they found,—occasions of going astray, 
which would have had no effect upon them had their hearts been right 
with God. The Jews rejected a spiritual Messiah, with all the evidences 
of his mission; but were ready to follow any impostor who promised 
them victory and dominion; they were disposed therefore to listen to 
every pretence, and to become the dupes of every illusion. But in no 
instance was the temptation either irresistible, or even strong, except as 
it was made so by their own violent inclinations to evil, and proneness 
tc find pretences for it. In all the cases here supposed, the temptation 
to error was never present but in circumstances in which it was con- 
fronted with the infinitely higher evidence of truth, and that not merely 
in the number or greatness of the miracles and predictions, but in the 
very nature of the “signs” themselves,—one being unquestionably — 
miraculous, the other being at best strange and surprising, without a 
decided miraculous or prophetic character. ‘The sudden and unper- 
ceived substitution of serpents for the rods of the magicians, might, if 
the matter had ended there, have neutralized the effect of the real 
transformation of Aaron’s rod; but then the serpent of Moses swallowed 
up the others. When frogs were already over all the land of Egypt, 
the imitation must have been confined to some spot purposely freed 
from them, and for that reason did not bear an unequivocal character ; 
nor could the turning of water from a well into blood, (no difficult mat. 
ter to pretend,) rival for an instant the conversion of the waters of the 
mighty Nile, and the innumerable channels and reservoirs fed by it, 
into that offensive substance. ‘To these we are to add the miracles 
which followed, and which obliged even the magicians to confess “tne 
finger of God.” To the people whom the false prophet spoken of in 
Deuteronomy should attempt to lead astray from the Law, all its mag. 


16: THEOLOGICAL INSTITUES. [PART 


nificert, evidences were known ; the glory of God was then between tie 
cherubim; the Urim and Thummim gave their responses; and the 
government was a standing miracle. To those who followed false 
Christs, the evidences of the mission of Jesus were known; his unequi 
vocal miracles, it is singular, were never denied by those very Jews 
who, ever looking out for deception, cried as to the expected Christ, 
“ Lo, he is hzre, and lo, he is there!” The “working of Satan .’ and th: 
“lying wonders,” mentioned in the Thessalonians, were to take place 
among a people, who not only had the words of Christ and his apostles, 
but acknowledged too their Divine authority as established by miracles 
and prophecies, the unequivocal character of which theirs never even 
pretended to equal. Thus, in none of the instances adduced in the 
argument, was there any exposure to inevitable error, by any evidence 
in favour of falsehood; the evidence of the truth was in all these cases 
at hand, and presented itself under an obviously distinct and superior 
character. We conclude therefore that the objection to the conclusive 
nature of the proof of the-truth of the Scriptures from miracles and pro- 
phecies grounded upon the supposed admission that miracles may be 
wrought and prophecies uttered in favour of error, is not only without 
foundation, but that as far as Scriptural evidence goes on this subject, the 
demonstrative nature of real miracles and prophecies is, by what it 
really admits as to “the working of Satan,” abundantly confirmed. It 
* does not admit that real miracles can be wrought, or real prophecies 
uttered ; and it never supposes simulated ones, when opposed to revealed 
truth, but under circumstances in which they can be detected, or which 
give them an equivocal character, and in which they may be compared 
with true miracles and predictions, so that none can be deceived by them 
but those who are violently bent on error and transgression. 

Another objection to the conclusiveness of the proof from miracles, is 
brought from the pretended heathen miracles of Aristeas, Pythagoras, 
Alexander of Pontus, Vespasian, and Apollonius Tyanzeus, and from ac- 
counts of miracles in the Romish Church; but as this objection has 
been very feebly urged by the adversaries of Christianity, as though 
they themselves were ashamed of the argument, our notice of it shall 
be brief. For a full consideration of the objection we refer to the 
authors mentioned below. (4) 

With respect to most of these pretended miracles, we may cbserve, 
that it was natural to expect that pretences to miraculous powers should 
be made under every form of religion, since the opinion of the earliest 
ages was in favour of the occurrence of such events; and as truth bad 
been thus sanctioned, it is not surprising that error should attempt to 
counterfeit its authority. But they are all deficient in evidence. Many 


(4) Macxniaut’s Truth of the Gospel History; Doveiass Criterion; Camp 
Bett on Miracles; and Pauey’s Evidences, 


FIRS’. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 169 


of them indeed are absurd, and carry the air of fable; and as to others, 
t is well observed by Dr. Macknight, (Truth of the Gospel History,) 
that “they are vouched to us by no such testimony as can induce a 
prudent man to give them credit. They are not repcrted by any eye 
witnesses of them, nor by any persons on whom they were wrought. 
Those who relate them do not even pretend to have received them from 
eye w tnesses; we know them only by vague reports, the original of 
which no one can exactly trace. The miracles ascribed to Pythagoras 
were not reported until several hundred years after his death ; and those 
of Apollonius, one hundred years after his death.” Many instances 
which are given, especially among the papists, may be resolved into 
imagination ; others, both popish and pagan, into the artifice of priests 
who were of the ruling party, and therefore feared no punishment even 
upon detection; and in almost all cases, we find that they were per- 
formed in favour of the dominant religion, and before persons whose 
religious prejudices were to be flattered and strengthened by them, and 
of course, persons very much disposed to beconie dupes. Bishop Doug. 
las has laid down the following decisive and clear rules in his “ Crite- 
rion,” for trying miracles. That we may reasonably suspect any ac- 
counts of miracles to be false, if they are not published till long after 
the time when they are said to have been performed—or if they were 
not first published in the place where they are said to have been wrought 
—or if they probably were suffered to pass without examination, in the © 
time, and at the place where they took their rise. These are general 
grounds of suspicion, to which may be added particular ones, arising 
from any circumstances which plainly indicate imposture and artifice on 
the one hand, or credulity and imagination on the other. 

Before such tests, all pagan, popish, and other pretended miracles 
without exception, shrink : and they are not for a moment to be brought 
into comparison with works wrought publicly—in the sight of thousands, 
and those often opposers of the system to be established by them—works 
not by any ingenuity whatever to be resolved into artifice on the 
one part, or into the effects of imagination on the other—works per- 
formed before scholars, statesmen, rulers, persecutors; of which the 
instances are numerous, and the places in which they occurred various 
-—works published at the time, and on the very spot—works not in 
favour of a ruling system, but directed against every other religious 
gstablishment under heaven; and, for giving their testimony to which, 
the original witnesses had therefore to expect, and did in succession 
receive, reproach, stripes, imprisonment, and death. 

It is also of importance to observe, that whatever those pretended 
miracles might be, whether false or exaggerated relations, or artful im- 
postures; or even were we to admit some of them to have been occur. 
rences of an extraordinary and inexplicable kind, they are for the most 


170 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTEs. |PART 


part, whether pagun or papal, a sort of insulated occurrences, which do 


not so much as profess to prove any thing of common interest to the 
world. As they are destitute of convincing marks of credibility, so they 
have no inherent propriety, nor any perceptible connection with a design 
of importance to mankind. But “the Scriptures of the Old Testament 
record a continued succession of wonderful works, connected also in a most 
remarkable manner with the system carried on from the fali of Adam 
to the coming of Christ. The very first promise of a Redeemer, who 
should bruise the serpent’s head, appears to have been accompanied with 
a signal miracle, by which the nature of the serpent tribe was instantly 
changed, and reduced to a state of degradation and baseness, expressive 
of the final overthrow of that evil spirit, through whose deceits man had 
fallen from his innocence and glory. The mark set upon Cain was 
probably some miraculous change in his external appearance, trans- 
mitted to his posterity, and serving as a memorial of the first apostasy 
from the true religion. The general deluge was a signal instance of 
miraculous punishment inflicted upon the whole human race, when they 
had departed from the living God, and were become utterly irreclaim- 
able. ‘The dispersion of Babel, and the confusion of tongues, indicated 
the Divine purpose of preventing an intermixture of idolaters and Athe- 
ists with the worship of the true God. The wonders wrought in Egypt, 
by the hand of Moses, were pointedly directed against the senseless and 
abominable idolatries of that devoted country, and were manifestly 
designed to expose their absurdity and falsehood, as well as to effect the 
deliverance of God’s people, Israel. ‘The subsequent miracles in the 
desert, had an evident tendency to wean the Israelites from an attach- 
ment to the false deities of the surrounding nations, and to instruct them 
by figurative representations in that ‘better covenant, established upon 
better promises, of which the Mosaic institute was designed to be a 
shadow and atype. ‘The settlement of the Israelites in Canaan under 
their leader Joshua, and their continuance in it for a long succession of 
ages, were accompanied with a series of wonders, all operating to that 
one purpose of the Almighty, the separation of his people from a wicked 
and apostate world, and the preservation of a chosen seed, through 
whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed. Every miracle 


wrought under the Jewish theocracy, appears to have been intended,. 


either to correct the superstitions and impieties of the neighbouring 
nations, and to bring them to a conviction that the Lord Jehovah was 
the true God, and that beside him there was none other ; or to reclaim 
the Jews, whenever they betrayed a disposition to relapse into heathen- 
ish abominations, and to forsake that true religion which the Almighty 
was pledged to uphold throughout all ages, and for the completion of 
which he was then, in his infinite wisdom, arranging all human 
events 


Peer tastt 


~ 


FIRST. } THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 171 


“In the miracles which our Lord performed, he not only evinced his 
Divine power, but fulfilled many important prophecies relating to him as 
the Messiah. Thus they afforded a two-fold evidence of his authority. 
In several of them we perceive likewise a striking reference to the 
especial object of his mission. Continually did he apply these wonder. 
ful works to the purpose of inculcating and establishing doctrines, nc less 
wonderful and interesting to the sons of men. 

«The same may likewise be remarked of the miracles recorded of 
the apostles, after our Lord’s departure from this world, in none of 
which do we find any thing done for mere ostentation ; but an evi- 
dent attention to the great purpose of the Gospel, that of’ ‘turning men 
from darkness unto light, and from the power of Satan unto God.’ 

“Tt seems impossible for any thinking man to take such a view as 
this of the peculiar design and use of the Scripture miracles, and not to 
perceive in them the unerring counsels of infinite wisdom, as well as 
the undoubted exertions of infinite power. When we see the several 
parts of this stupendous scheme thus harmonizing and co-operating for 
the attainment of one specific object, of the highest importance to the 
whole race of mankind ; we cannot but be struck with a conviction of 
the absolute impossibility of imposture or enthusiasm, in any part of 
the proceeding. We are compelled to acknowledge, that they exhibit 
proofs of Divine agency, carried on in.one continued series, such as no 
other system hath ever pretended to: such as not only surpasses all 
human ingenuity, but seems impossible to have been effected by any 
combination of created beings.” (Van Mixpert’s Boyle Lectures.) 

On miracles therefore, like those which attest the mission of Moses 
and of Christ, we may safely rest the proof of the authority of both, and 
say to each of them, though with a due sense of the superiority of the 
“Son” to the “servant,” ‘ Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher 
come from Ged, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except 
Gop be with him.” | 


Note A.—Page 158. 


In reply to the objection that ‘ Moses describes the works of the magicians in 
the very same language as he does his own, and therefore that there is reason to 
conclude that they were equally miraculous,” Dr. Farmer remarks,— 

‘1, That nothing is more common than to speak of professed jugglers, as 
doing what they pretend and appear to do, and that this language never misleads, 
when we reflect what sort of men are spoken of, namely, mere impostors on the 
sight: why might not Moses then use the common populer language when speak- 
ing of the magicians, without anv danger of misconstruction, inasmuch as the 
subject he was treating, all the circumstances of the narrative, and the opinion 
which the historian was known to entertain of the inefficacy and imposture cf 
magic, did all voncur to prevent mistakes ? ° 


172 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, [PART 


“2. Moses does not affirm that there was a perfect conformity between his 
works and those of the magicians; he does not close the respective relations of 
his own particular miracles, with saying the magicians did that thing, or accord 
ing to what he did, so did they, a form of speech used on this occasion no less 
than three times in one chapter, to describe the exact correspondence between 
the orders of God and the behaviour of his servants; but makes choice of a word 
of great latitude, such as does not necessarily express any thing more than ‘@ 
general similitude, such as is consistent with a difference in many important 
respects, they did so or in like manner as he had.—That a perfect imitation 6. uld 
not be designed by this word, is evident from its being applied to cases in which 
such an imitation was absolutely impracticable: for, when Aaron had converted 
all the waters of Egypt into blood, we are told the magicians did so, that is, 
something in like sort. Nor can it be supposed that they covered the land of 
Egypt with frogs, this had been done already; they could only appear to bring 
them over some small space cleared for the purpose. But what is more decisive, 
the word imports nothing more than tneir attempting some imitation of Moses, 
for it is used when they failed in their attempt: They did so to bring forth lice, 
but they could not. 

‘3. So far is Moses from ascribing the tricks of the magicians to the invoca- 
tion and power of demons, or to any superior beings whatever, that he does most 
expressly refer all they did or attempted in imitation of himself to human artifice 
and imposture. ‘The original words, which are translated inchantments, (5) are 
entirely diiterent from that rendered enchantments in other passages of Scripture, 
and do not carry in them any sort of reference to sorcery or magic, or the inter- 
position of any spiritual agents; they import deception and concealment, and 
ought to have been rendered secret sleights or jugglings, and are thus translated 
even by those who adopt the common hypothesis with regard to the magicians. 
These secret sleights and jugglings are expressly referred to the magicians, not 
to the devil, who is not so much as mentioned in the history. Should we there- 
fore be asked, (6) How it came to pass, in case the works of the magicians were 
performed by sleight of hand, that Moses has given no hint hereof ?* we answer, 
He has not contented himself with a hint of this kind, but, at the same time that 
he ascribes his own miracles to Jehovah, he has, in the most direct terms, 
resolved every thing done in imitation of them entirely to the fraudulent con- 
trivances of his opposers, to legerdemain or sleight of hand, in contradistinction 
from magical incantations. Moses therefore could not design to represent their 
works as real miracles, at the very time he was branding them as impostures. 

‘«‘ Tt remains only to show, that the works performed by the magicians did not 
exceed the cause to which they are ascribed; or in other words, the magicians 
proceeded no farther in imitation of Moses, than human artifice might enable 
them to go, (while the miracles of Moses were not liable to the same impeach- 


(5) The original word used, Exod. viii, 11, is Belahatehem ; and that which occurs, ch. vii, 22, 
and ch. viii, 7, 18, is Belatehem; the former is probably derived from Lahat, which signifies to 
burn, and the substantive a flame or shining sword-blade, and is applied to the flaming swor i 
which guarded the tree of life, Gen. iii, 24. Those who formerly used legerdemain, dazzled and 
deceived the sight of spectators by the art of brandishing their swords, and sometimes seemed ta 
eat them, and to thrust them into their bodies; and the expression seems to intimate, that thu 
magicians appearing to turn their rods into serpents, was owing to their eluding the eyes of the 
spectators by a dexterous management of their swords. Inthe preceding instances they made use 
of some different contrivance, for the latter word, belatehem, comes from Laat, to cover or hide, 
(which some think the former word also does,) and therefore fitly ea presses any secret artifices 01 
methods of deception, whereby false appearances are imposed upon the spectators. 

‘6) As we are by Dr. Macknight, in his Truth of the Gospel History, p. 372. 


FIRST.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 173 


ment, and hore upon themselves the plainest signatures of that Divine power ta 
which they are referred.) If this can be proved, the interposition of the devi! on 
this occasion will appear to be an hypothesis invented without any kind of ne- 
cessity, as it certainly is without any authority from the sacred text. 

‘1, With regard to the first attempt of the magicians, the turning rods into 
serpents: it cannot be accounted extraordinary that they should seem to succeed 
in it, when we consider that these men were famous for the art of dazzling and 
deceiving the sight: and that serpents, being first rendered tractable and harm- 
less, as they easily may, have had a thousand different tricks played with then, 
to the astonishment of the spectators. 

“2. With regard to the next attempt of the magicians to imitate Moses, who 
had already turned all the running and standing waters of Egypt into blood, there 
is no difficulty in accounting for their success in the degree in which they suc- 
ceeded. For it was during the continuance of this judgment, when no water 
could be procured but by digging 10und about the river, that the magicians 
attempted by some proper preparations to change the colour of the small quantity 
that was brought them, (probably endeavouring to persuade Pharaoh that they 
could as easily have turned a larger quantity into blood.) In a case of this nature 
imposture might, and, as we learn from history, often did take place. It is re- 
lated by Valerius Maximus, (Lib. i, c. 6,) that the wine poured into the cup of 
Xerxes was three times changed into blood. But such trifling feats as these 
could not at all disparage the miracle of Moses; the vast extent of which raised 
it above the suspicion of fraud, and stamped upon every heart, that was not 
steeled against all conviction, the strongest impression of its divinity. For he 
turned their streams, rivers, ponds, and the water in all their receptacles, inte 
blood. And the fish that was in the river (Nile) died; and the river stank, Exod 
vii, 19-21. 

‘3, Pharaoh not yielding to this evidence, God proceeded to farther punish. 
ments, and covered the whole Jand of Egypt with frogs. (7) Before these frogs 
were removed, the magicians undertook to bring into some place cleared for the 
purpose a fresh supply; which they might easily do when there was such plenty 
every where at hand. Here also the narrow compass of the work exposed it to 
the suspicion of being effected by human art; to which the miracle of Moses was 
not liable; the infinite number of ftogs which filled the whole kingdom of Egypt, 
(so that their ovens, beds, and tables, swarmed with them,) being a proof of their 
immediate miraculous production. Beside, the magicians were unable to procure 
their removal; which was accomplished by Moses, at the submissive application 
of Pharaoh, and at the very time that Pharaoh himself chose, the more clearly to 
eonvince him that God was, the author of these miraculous judgments, and tnat 
their infliction or removal did not depend upon the influence of the elements or 
stars, at set times or in critical junctures, Exod. viii, 8. 

“4, The history of the last attempt of the magicians confirms the account 
hare given of all their former ones. Moses turned all the dust of the land into 
‘ice , and this plague, like the two preceding ones, being inflicted at the word of 
Moses, and extended over the whole kingdom of Egypt, must necessarily have 
been owing, not to human art, but to a Divine power. Nevertheless, the motives 
upon which the magicians at first engaged in the contest with Moses, the shame 
of desisting and some slight appearances of success in their former attempts, 
prompted them still to carry on the imposture, and to try wth their enchantments 
to bring forth lice, but they could not. With all their skill in magic, and with all 


(7) Exod. viii, 6-8. Nor, indeed, can it he imagined, that after this cr the former plague had 


peen removed, Pharaoh would ore or his magicians to renew either. 


174 ‘THEOLOGICAL ‘NSTITUTES \PART 


their dexterity in deceiving the spectators, they could not even succoed so far as 
they had done in former instances, by producing a specious counterfeit of this 
wark of Moses. Had they hitherto performed real miracles by the assistance of 
the devil, how came they to desist now? It cannot be a greater miracle to pro 

duce lice, than to turn rods into serpents, water into blood, and to create frogs 

It has, indeed, been very often said, that the devil was now laid under a restraint. 
but hitherto no proof of this assertion has been produced The Scripture is silent, 
both as to the devil being now restrained from interposing any farther in favour 
of the magicians, and as to his having afforded them his assistance on the former 
occasions. But if we agree with Moses in ascribing to the magicians nothing 
more than the artifice and dexterity which belonged to their profession ; we shall 
find that their want of success in their last attempt was owing to the different 
nature and circumstances of their enterprise.” 


Nore B.—Page 166. 


‘‘ Bur if at any time evil spirits, by their subtlety and experience, and know.. 
ledge of affairs in the world, did foretell things which accordingly came to pass, 
they were things that happened not long after, and commonly such as them- 
selves did excite and prompt men to. Thus, when the conspiracy against Cesar 
was come just to be put into execution, and the devil had his agents concerned 
in it, he could foretell the time and place of his death. But it had been foretold 
to Pompey, Crassus, and Cesar himself before, as Tully informs us from his own 
knowledge, that they should all die in their beds, and in an honourable old age, 
who yet all died violent deaths. Wise and observing men have sometimes been 
able to make strange predictions concerning the state of affairs; and therefore 
spirits may be much more able to do it. Evil spirits could fortell what they were 
permitted to inflict or procure: they might have foretold the calamities of Job, 
or the death of Ahab at Ramoth-gilead. 

‘‘The devil could not always foretell what was to come to pass, and therefore 
his agents had need of their vaults and hollow statues, and other artifices to con- 
ceal their ignorance, and help them out when their arts of conjuration failed. 
But we have no reason to think that the devil, who is so industrious to promote 
his evil ends, by all possible means, would omit such an opportunity as was giver 
him by the opinion which the heathens had of their oracles ; and the trials which 
Creesus and Trajan made are sufficient to prove that there was something super. 
natural and diabolical in them. Crcesus sent to have many oracles consulted at 
a set time, and the question to be put to them was, what Croesus himself at that 
time was doing; and he resolved to be employed about the most improbable thing 
that could be imagined, for he was boiling a tortoise and a lamb toyether in 4 
brass pot ; and yet the oracle of Delphi ‘discovered to the messengers what the 
King was then about. Trajan, when he was going into Parthia, sent a blank 
paper sealed up, to an oracle of Assyria for an answer: the oracle returned hitr 
another blank paper, to show that it was not so to be imposed upon. 

** But though things of present concernment were discovered both to Croesus 
and Trajan beyond all human power to know, yet both were imposed upon by 
ambiguous answers, when they consulted about things future, of which the devil 
could not attain the knowledge. 

“‘ Many of the heathen priests themselves, upon examination, publicly confessed 
several of their oracles to be impostures, and discovered the whole contrivance 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 175 


and management of the deceit, which was entered upon record. And in the rest. 
the power of the devil was always so limited and restrained, as to afford sufficient 
means to undeceive men, though many of his predictions might come to pass.“ 
Jenxins’s Reasonableness of Christianity.) 

‘Many of the learned regard all the heathen oracles as the result of the 
grossest imposture. Some consider them as the work of evil spirits. Otl. ers are 
of opinion, that through these oracles some real prophecies were occasionally 
vouchsafed to the Gentile world, for their instruction and consolation. But to 
whichsoever of these opinions we may incline, it will not be difficult to discover 
a radical difference between these and the Scripture prophecies. 

‘In the heathen oracles, we cannot discern any clear and unequivocal tokens 
of genuine prophecy. They were destitute of dignity and importance, had no 
connection with each other, tended to no object of general concern, and never 
looked into times remote from their own. We read only of some few predictions 
and prognostications, scattered among the writings of poets and philosophers, 
most of which, beside being very weakly authenticated, appear to have been 
answers to questions of merely local, personal, and temporary concern, relating to 
the issue of affairs then actually in hand, and to events speedily to be determined. 
Far from attempting to form any chain of prophecies, respecting things far 
distant as to time or place, or matters contrary to human probability, and re- 
quiring supernatural agency to effect them, the heathen priests and soothsayers 
did not even pretend to a systematic and connected plan. They hardly dared, 
indeed, to assume the prophetic character in its full force, but stood trembling, as 
it were, on the brink of futurity, conscious of their inability to venture beyond 
the depths of human conjecture. Hence their predictions became so fleeting, sc 
futile, so uninteresting, that they were never collected together as worthy of 
preservation, but soon fell into disrepute and almost total oblivion. 

‘‘The Scripture prophecies, on the other hand, constitute a series of pre. 
dictions, relating principally to one grand object, of universal importance, the 
work of man’s redemption, and carried on in regular progression through the 
Patriarchal, Jewish, and Christian dispensations, with a harmony and uniformity 
of design, clearly indicating one and the same Divine Author, who alone could 
say, ‘Remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is none 
else: I am God, and there is none like me; declaring the end from the begin. 
ning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel 
shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.’ The genuine prophets of the Almighty 
beheld these things with a clear and steadfast eye; they declared them with 
authority and confidence; and they gave, moreover, signs from heaven for the 
conviction of others. Accordingly their writings have been handed down from 
age to age; have been preserved with scrupulous fidelity; and have ever been 
regarded with reverence, from the many incontestable evidences of their accom- 
plishment, and from their inseparable connection with the religious hopes and 
axpectations of mankind.” (Bishop of Llandaff.) 


CHAPTER XVII. 


ProrHecies oF ScRIPTURE. 


Tue nature and force of the argument from prophecy have been 
already stated; (Vide chap. ix;) and it has been proved, that where 
real predictions are uttered,—not happy coniectures which shrewd and 


176 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, [PAR1 


observing mep may sometimes make, but predictions which imply fore 
sight of events dependent upon the various contingencies of human 
affairs, and a knowledge of the characters, dispositions, and actions of 
persons yet unborn, so as to decide unerringly on the conduct which 
they will pursue—they can only be uttered by inspixed men, and the 
author of such communications can be no other than the infinite aud 
omniscient God, “showing to his servants the things which shall be 
hereafter,” in order to authenticate their mission, and to affix the stamp 
of his own infallibie authority upon their doctrine. 

The authenticity and the antiquity of the records which contain these 
predictions, have been already established; and the only subject of 
inquiry proper to this chapter is, the prophetic character of the predic- 
tions said to be contained in the Old and New Testaments. A few 
general observations may however be previously allowed. 

1. The instanzes to be considered by those who would fully satisfy 
themselves on this point are not few but many. The believer in the 
Divine authority of the Old and New Testaments, is ready to offer for 
examination great numbers of professed prophecies relative to indi- 
viduals, cities, states, the person and offices of Messiah, and the 
Christian Church, which he alleges to have been unequivocally fulfilled ; 
independent of predictions which he believes to be now fulfilling; or 
which are hereafter to be fulfilled in the world. 

2. If as to the fulfilment of some particular prophecies, the opinions 
of men should differ, there is an abundance of others, the accomplish- 
ment of which has been so evident as to defy any rational interpretation 
which will not involve their fulfilment ; while unbelievers are challenged 
to show any clear prediction of Holy Scripture which has been falsified 
by the event throughout the whole range of those ages which are com. 
prehended by the Bible, from the Pentateuch to the Apocalypse. 

3. The predictions in Scripture have already been distinguished in 
their character from the oracles and divinations of the heathen; (Vide 
chap. xvi;) and it may here be farther observed, that they are not, 
generally, separate and insulated predictions of the future, arising out of 
accidental circumstances, and connecting themselves with merely indi- 
vidual interests and temporary occasions. On the contrary, they chiefly 
relate to, and arise out of a grand scheme for the moral recovery of the 
human race from ignorance, vice, and wretchedness. ‘They speak of 
che agents to be employed in it, and especially of the great agent, the 
Rrveemer himself; and of those mighty and awful proceedings of 
Providence as to the nations of the earth, by which judgment and mercy 
are exercised with reference both to the ordinary principles of moral 
government, and especially to this restoring economy, to its struggles, 
its oppositions, and its triumphs. ‘They all meet in Crrtsr, as in ther 


proper centre, and in him only, however many of the single lines, when 


+ ee 


FIRST. } THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, Viz 


considered apart, may be imagined to have another direction, and though 
they may pass through intermediate events. “If we look,” says Bishop 
Hurd, “into the prophetic writings, we find that prophecy is of a pro- 
digious extent; that it commenced from the fall of man, and reaches to 
she consummation of all things; that for many ages it was delivered 
darkly, to a few persons, and with large intervals from the date of one 
| tophecy to that of another; but at length became more clear, more 
fry quent, and was uniformly carried on in the line of one people, sepa- 
rated from the rest of the world—among other reasons assigned, for this 
principally, to be the repository of the Divine Oracles ; that, with some 
intermission, the spirit of prophecy subsisted arnong that people to the 
coming of Christ, that he himself, and his apostles, exercised this power 
in the most conspicuous manner ; and left behind them many predictions 
recorded in the books of the New Testament, which profess to respect 
very distant events, and even run out to the end of time, or in St. John’s 
expression, to that period, ‘ when the mystery of God shall be perfected.’ 
Farther, beside the extent of this prophetic scheme, the dignity of the 
person whom it concerns, deserves our consideration. He is described 
in terms which excite the most august and magnificent ideas. He is 
spoken of, indeed, sometimes as being the seed of the woman, and as the 
Son of man; yet so as being at the same time of more than mortal 
extraction. He is even represented to us as being supericr to men and 
angels; as far above all principality and power; above all that is ac- 
counted great, whether in heaven or in earth; as the Word and Wis- 
dom of God ; as the eternal Son of the Father; as the Heir of all things, 
by whom he made the worlds; as the brightness of his glory, and the 
express image of his person. We have no words to denote greater 
ideas than these: the mind of man cannot elevate itself to nobler con- 
eeptions. Of such transcendent worth and excellence is that Jesus said 
to be, to whom all the prophets bear witness ! 

« Lastly, the declared purpose for which the Messiah, prefigured by 
so long a train of prophecy, came into the world, corresponds to all the 
rest of the representation. It was not to deliver an oppressed nation 
from civil tyranny, or to erect a great civil empire, that is, to achieve one 
of those acts which history accounts most heroic. No: it was not a 
mignty state, a victor people— 


Non res Romane perituraque regna— 


that was worthy to enter into the contemplation of this Divine person. 

It was another, and far sublimer purpose which he came to accomplish ; 

a purpose, in comparison of which all our policies are poor and little, 

and all the performances of man as nothing. It was to deliver a world 

from ruin; to abolish sin and death; to purify and immortalize human 

nature; and thus, in the most exalted sense of the words, to be 
Vot. I. 12 


{78 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


the Saviour of men and the blessing of all nations. There is no ex- 
aggeration in this account. I deliver the undoubted sense, if not always 
_the very words of Scripture. Consider then to what this representation 
amounts. Let us unite the several parts of it, and bring them to a 
point. A spirit of prophecy pervading all time—characterizing one 
person, of the highest dignity—and proclaiming the accomplishment of 
one purpose, the most beneficent, the most Divine, the imagination itself 
can project. Such is the Scriptural delineation, whether we will receive 
it or no, of that economy which we cal! prophetic.” 

4 Prophecy, in this peculiar sense, and on this ample scale, is pecu- 
ar to the religious system of the Holy Scriptures. Nothing like it is 
found any where beside ; and it accords perfectly with that system, that 
nothing similar should be found elsewhere. “The prophecies of Scrip- 
ture,” says that accomplished scholar, Sir W. Jones, “ bear no resem- 
blance in form or style to any that can be produced from the stores of 
Grecian, Indian, Persian, or even Arabian learning. The antiquity of 
those compositions, no man of learning doubts; and the unrestrained 
application of them to events long subsequent to their publication, is a 
solid ground of belief that they were genuine predictions, and conse- 
quently inspired.” ‘The advantage of this species of evidence belongs 
then exclusively to our revelation. Heathenism never made any clear 
and well-founded pretensions to it. Mohammedanism, though it stands 
itself as a proof of the truth of Scripture prophecy, is unsupported by 
a single prediction of its own. “To the Christian only belongs this 
testimony of his faith; this growing evidence gathering strength by length 
of time, and affording, from age to age, fresh proofs of its Divine origin. 
As a majestic river expands itself more and more the farther it removes 
from its source, so prophecy, issuing from the first promise in paradise 
as its fountain head, acquired additional strength and fulness as it rolled 
down successive ages, and will still go on increasing in extent and 
grandeur, until it shall finally lose itself in the ocean of eternity.” 

5. The objection which has. been raised to Scripture prophecy from 
its supposed obscurity, has no solid foundation. There is, it is true, a 
prophetic language of symbol and emblem; but it is a language which 
is definite and not equivocal in its meaning, and as easily mastered as 
the language of poetry, by attentive persons. This, however, is not 
always used. The style of the prophecies of Scripture very often 
differs in nothing from the ordinary style of the Hebrew poets; and, in 
not a few cases, and those too on which the Christian builds most in the 
argument, tt sinks into the plainness of historical narrative. Some de- 


gree of obscurity is essential to prophecy: for the end of it was not te 


gratify human curiosity, by a detail of future events and circumstances ; 
and too great clearness and speciality might have led to many artful 
attempts to fulfil the predictions, and so far the evidence of their ac- 


FIRST. } THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 179 


complishment would have been weakened. The two great ends of 
prophecy are, to excite expectation before the event, and then to confirm 
-he truth by a striking and unequivocal fulfilment; and it is a sufficient 
answer to the allegation of the obscurity of the prophecies of Scripture, 
that they have abundantly accomplished those objects, among the most 
intslligent and investigating, as well as among the simple and unlearned 
in ail ages. It cannot be denied, for instance, leaving out particular 
cases which might be given, that by means of these predictions the 
expectation of the incarnation and appearance of a Divine Restorer was 
kept up among the people to whom they were given, and spread even to 
the neighbouring nations; that as these prophecies multiplied, the hope 
became more intense; and that at the time of our Lord’s coming, the 
expectation of the birth of a very extraordinary person prevailed, not 
only among the Jews, but among other nations. This purpose was then 
sufficiently answered, and an answer is given to the objection. In like 
manner prophecy serves as the basis of our hope in things yet to come ; 
in the final triumph of truth and righteousness on earth, the universal 
establishment of the kingdom of our Lord, and:the rewards of eternal 
life to be bestowed at his second appearing. In these all true Christians 
agree ; and their hope could not have been so uniformly supported in all 
ages, and under all circumstances, had not the prophecies and predictive 
promises conveyed with sufficient clearness the general knowledge of 
the good for which they looked, though many of its particulars be un- 
revealed. ‘The second end of prophecy is, to confirm the truth by the 
subsequent event; and here the question of the actual fulfilment of 
Scripture prophecy is involved, to which we shall immediately advert. 
We only now observe, that it is no argument against the unequivocal 
fulfilment of several prophecies, that many have doubted or denied what 
the believers in revelation have on this subject so strenuously contended 
for. How few of mankind have read the Scriptures with serious atten- 
tion, or been at the pains to compare their prophecies with the state- 
ments in history! How few, especially of the objectors to the Bible, 
have read it in this manner! How many of them have confessed, un- 
blushingly, their unacquaintance with its contents, or have proved what 
they have not confessed by the mistakes and misrepresentations into 
which they have fallen. As for the Jews, the evident dominion of their 
prejudices ; their general averseness to discussion ; and the extravagant 
principles of interpretation they have adopted for many ages, which set 
all sober criticism at defiance, render nugatory any authority which 
might be ascribed to their denial of the fulfilment of certain prophecies 
in the sense adopted by Christians. We may add to this, that among 
Christian critics themselves there may be much disagreement. Kc. 
centricities and absurdities are found among the learned in every depavt. 
ment of knowledge, and much of this waywardness, and affectation of 


1{8U0 THEOLOG CAL INSTITUTES. IPART 


singulacity has infected interpreters of Scripture. But, alter all, there 
is a truth and reason in every subject which the understandings of the 
generality of men will apprehend and acknowledge, whenever it is fully 
understood and impartially considered; to this, in all such cases, the 
appeal can only be made, and here it may be made with confidence. 

6. For want of a right apprehension of the meaning of somewhat aa 
unfortunate term which has obtained in theology, the “double sense”. of 
many prophecies, an objection of another kind has been raised, as though 
no definite meaning could be assigned to the prophecies of Scripture. 
Nothing can be more unfounded. ‘“’The double sense of many prophe- 
cies in the Old Testament,” says an able writer, “has been made a pre. 
text by ill-dispose¢ men, for representing them as of uncertain meaning, 
and resembling the ambiguity of the pagan oracles. But whoever con- 
sidera the subject with due attention, will perceive how little ground 
there is for such an accusation. ‘The equivocations of the heathen ora- 
cles manifestly arose from their ignorance of future events, and from 
their endeavours to conceal that ignorance, by such indefinite expres- 
sions, as might be equally applicable to two or more events of a con- 
trary description. But the double sense of the Scripture prophecies, far 
from originating in any doubt or uncertainty, as to the fulfilment of them 
in etther sense, springs from a foreknowledge of their accomplishment in 
both ; whence the prediction is purposely so framed as to include both 
events, which, so far from being contrary to each other, are typical the 
one of the other, and are thus connected together by a mutual depend- 
ency or relation. ‘This has often been satisfactorily proved, with respect 
to those prophecies which referred, in their primary sense, to the events 
of the Old Testament, and, in their farther and more complex significa. 
_ lon, to those of the New: and on this double accomplishment of some 
prophecies is grounded our firm expectation of the completion of others 
which remain yet unfulfilled in their secondary sense, but which we 
justly consider as equally certain in their issue, as those which are 
already past. So far, then, from any valid objection lying against the 
credibility of the Scripture prophecies, from these seeming ambiguities 
of meaning, we may urge them as additional proofs of their coming 
from God. For, who but the Being, who is infinite in knowledge and in 
counsel, could so construct predictions as to give them a two-fold applica 
tin, to events distant from, and (to human foresight) unconnected with, 
etscth other? What power less than Divine could so frame them, as to 
make the accomplishment of them, in one instance, a solemn pledge and 
assurance of their completion in another instance, of stili higher and 
more universal importance? Where will the scoffer find any thing like 
this in the artifices of heathen oracles, to conceal their inorance, and 
to impose on. the credulity of mankind ?’ 

We now proceed to the enumeration of a few out of the great number 


ia oul 
«as . 


FIKST.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 181 


of predictions contained in the Scriptures, which most unequivocally 
show a perfect knowledge of future contingent events, and which, there- 
fore, according to our argument, as certainly prove that they who utter- 
ed them “spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost,’ by the Spirit 
of the omniscient and infinitely prescient Gop, (8) 

The very first promise made to man is a prediction which none could 
have uttered but He whose eye looks through the depths of future ages, 
and knows the result as well as the beginning of all things. “J will pu 
enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed ; it 
shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” In vain is it attempt- 
ed to resolve the whole of the transaction with which this prediction stands 
connected, into allegory. Such criticism, if applied to any other ancient 
historical book, bearing marks of authentic narration as unequivocal as 
the book of Genesis, would not be tolerated by the advocates of this 
absurd conception themselves, whether they are open or disguised infi- 


(8) ‘*‘ The correspondences of types and antitypes, though they are not proper 
proofs of the truth of a doctrine, yet may be very reasonable confirmations of 
the foreknowledge of God; of the uniform view of Providence under different 
dispensations ; of the analogy, harmony, and agreement, between the Old Testa- 
ment and the New. The words of the law concerning one particular kind of 
death, He that is hanged is accursed of God, can hardly be conceived to have 
been put in on any other account, than with a view and foresight to the applica- 
tion made of it by St. Paul. The analogies between the paschal lamb and the 
Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world; between the Egyptian bon. 
dage and the tyranny of sin; between the baptism of the Israelites in the sea and 
in the cloud, and the baptism of Christians ; between the passage through the 
wilderness, and through the present world; between Joshua bringing the people 
into the promised land, and Jesus Christ being the Captain of salvation to 
believers ; between the Sabbath of rest promised to the people of God in the 
earthly Canaan, and the eternal rest promised to the people of God in the heavenly 
Canaan; between the liberty granted them from the time of the death of the 
high priest, to him that had fled into a city of refuge, and the redemption pur- 
chased by the death of Christ; between the high priest entering into the holy place 
every year with the blood of others, and Christ’s once entering with his own blood 
into heaven itself, to appear in the shadows of things to come, of good things to 
come, the shadows of heavenly things, the presence of God for us. These, I say, 
and innumerable other analogies, between the figures for the time then present, 
patterns of things in the heavens, and the heavenly things themselves, cannot with- 
out the force of strong prejudice be conceived to have happened by mere chance, 
without any foresight or design. ‘There are no such analogies, much less such 
series of analogies, found in the books of more enthusiastic writers living in such 
remote ages from each other. It is much more creaiwie and reasonable to sup- 
pose, what St. Paul affirms, that these things were our examples; and that in that 
uniform course of God’s government of the world, all things happened unto them 
of old for ensamples, and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends 
of the world are come. And hence arises that aptness of similitude, in the ap,1: 
cation of several legal performances to the morality of the Gospel, that it ean 
very hardly be supposed not to have been originally intended.” (Dr. S. CLarks « 
Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion, p. 263.) 


182 - THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, [PART 


dels. In vain is it alleged, that a mere fact of natura/ history is stated : 


for if the words are understood to express no more than the enmity be. 
tween the human race and serpents, it would require to be proved, in 
order to establish a special punishment of the serpent, that man has a 
greater hostility to serpents than to other dangerous animals, which he 
2xtirpates whenever he can master them by force or stratagem ; and that 
serpents have a stronger disposition to do injury to men, than to those 
animals which they make their daily prey, or to others which they never 
fail to strike when within their reach. As this was obviously false in 
fact, Moses could not assert it; and, if it had been true in natural his- 
tory, to have said this and nothing more, to have confined himself to the 
mere literal fact, a fact of no importance, would have been far below 
the character of Moses as a writer—a lofty and sublime character, to 
which the heathens and sometimes infidels themselves have done Justice. 
In no intelligible sense can these celebrated words be understood, but 
in that in which they are fixed by innumerable references and allusions 
of other parts of the sacred volume, and which ought, in all good criti- 
cism, to determine their meaning. ‘The serpent, and the seed of the 
woman, are the representatives of two invisible and mighty powers; the 
one good, the other evil; the one Divine, though incarnate of the 
woman, the other diabolic ; between whom an enmity was placed, which 
was to express itself in a long and fearful struggle, in the course of 
which the seed of the woman should sustain a temporary wound and 
suffering, but which should issue in the bruising of the head, the inflict- 
‘ng a fatal blow upon the power, of his adversary. The scene of this 
sontest was to be our globe, and generally the visible agents of it men, 
inder their respective leaders, the serpent on the one side, and the seed 
of the woman on the other, practising, and advocating, and endeavour- 
ing to render dominant truth or error, virtue or-vice, obedience to God 
or rebellion against his authority. We ask then, has such a contest of 
principles and powers taken place in the world, or not? The answer 
must be in the affirmative ; for every age bears witness to it. We see 
t commencing in Cain and Abel—in the resistance of the antediluvians 
to the righteousness tanght by Noah ;—in their punishment ;—in the rise 
of idolatry, and the struggles. of the truth in opposition to it ;—in the 
inflictions of singular judgments upon nations, for the punishment and 
exposure of idolatry, as in the plagues of Egypt, the destruction of the 
nations of Canaan, &c. We trace the contest throughout the whore 
juistery of the Jewish nation down to the coming of our Lord; and occa. 
sionally we see it extending into the neighbouring pagan nations, although 
they were generally, as a part of their punishment, “ suffered to walk un 
their own ways,” and Satan as to them was permitted to “ teep his goods 
in peace,” till the time of gracious visitation should arrive. We see 
the incarnate Redeemer, for a time suffering, and at length dying. Then 


FIRST] "THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 183 


was “the hour and power of darkness ;” then was his heel bruised : but 
ne died only to revive again, more visibly and powerfully to establish his 
king‘lom and to commence his spiritual conquests. In every direction 
were the regions, where Satan “had his seat,” penetrated by the hea- 
venly light of the doctrine of Christ; and every where the most tremen- 
dous persecutions were excited against its unarmed and unprotected 
preachers and their converts. But the gates of hell prevailed not against 
the Church founded on a rock, and “ Satan fell as lightning from hea- 
ven,” —froin the thrones, and temples, and judgment seats, and schools 
of the ancient civilized world; the idolatry of ages was renounced ; 
Christ was adored through the vast extent of the Roman empire, and in 
many of the countries beyond even its ample sweep. Under other 
forms the enemy revived, and the contest was renewed ; but in every 
ag? it has been maintained. The principles of pure evangelical truth 
were never extinguished; and the “children of the kingdom,” were 
“minished and brought low,” only to render the renewal of the assault 
by unexpected agents, singularly raised up, more marked and more 
eminently of God. We need not run over even. the heads of the his- 
tory of the Church: what is the present state of things? The contest 
still continues, but with increasing zeal on the part of Christians, who 
are carrying on offensive operations against the most distant parts of 
the long-undisturbed kingdom of darkness; placing there the principles 
of truth; commencing war upon idolatry and superstition; and esta- 
blishing the institutions of the Christian Church with a success which 
warrants the hope that the time is not far distant, when the “ head of 
the serpent will be bruised” in all idolatrous countries, and the idols of 
modern heathen states, ike those of old, be displaced, to introduce the 
worship of the universal Saviour, “‘ Gop over all, blessed for ever.” 
May we not ask, whether all this was not infinitely above human 
foresight? Who could confidently state that a contest of this peculiar 
nature would continue through successive ages ; that men would not all 
go over to one or other of the opposing parties; nay, who could confi- 
dently conjecture in the age of Moses, (when the tendency to idolatry had 
become so strong, that the chosen seed. themselves, under the constant 
demonstration of miracles, visibly blessed while they remained faithful 
to the worship of God, and as eminently and visibly punished when they 
departed from it, could not be preserved from the infection,) that idolatry 
should one day be abolished throughout the earth? Past experience and 
all probabilities were opposed to the hope that the cause of the seed of 
the woman should prevail, and yet it stands recorded, ‘2 [rather Hx, | 
shall bruise thy head.’ Infidels may scoff at a Redeemer, and deride 
he notion of a tempter; but they cannot deny that such a contest 
petween opposite parties and principles as is here foretold has actually 
caken place, and still contimmes ; that contest, so exteaded, sq continued, and 


184 THEVLOGICAL INSTITUTES, [PART 


so terminated, human foresight could not foretel’ ; and the fact established, 
therefore, is an accomplishment of a prophecy, which could originate 
only in Divine prescience. 

The celebrated prediction of Jacob at the close of his life respecting 
the time of the appearing of “ Suinon,” may next be considered. 

The word signifies, “ He who is to be sent,” or * The Peace-maker.’ 
In either sense, the application to that great Person, to whom all the 
patriarchs looked forward, and the prophets gave witness, is obvious. 
Those who doubt this, are bound to give us a better interpretation. 
—Before a certain event, a certain person was to come, to whom the 
people should be gathered. The event has certainly arrived, but who 
is the person? The application of the prophecy to Messiah is not an 
invention of Christians. The ancient Jews, as appears from their com 
mentators, so understood it: and the modern ones are unable to resist 
the evidence drawn from it, in favour of the claims of our Lord. ‘That 
it is a prediction, is proved from its form, and the circumstances under 
which it was delivered; that it has received a singular accomplishment 
in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, is also certain ; and it is equally cer- 
tain, that no individual beside can be produced, in whom it has been in 
any sense whatever accomplished. For the ample illustration of the 
prophecy the reader is referred to commentators, and to Bishop Newton’s 
well-known work on the prophecies, _ It is sufficient here to allege, that 
Judah, as a tribe, remained till after the advent of Jesus Christ, which 
cannot be said of the long-dispersed ten tribes, and scarcely of Benjamin, 
which was merged in the tribe of Judah.—Cuvss asks where the supre- 
macy of Judah was. when Nebuchadnezzar carried the whole nation 
captive to Babylon; when Alexander subdued Palestine; and when it 
was a tributary province to the Roman empire? The prediction, how. 
ever, does rot convey the idea either of independent or supreme power. 
This no ‘ne tribe had when all were united in one state, and each had 
its sceptre and its princes or chiefs. It is therefore enough to show, that 
under all its various fortunes, the tribe of Judah retained its ensigns, and 
its chiefs, and its tribeship, until Shiloh came. It is no uncommon 
thing for a country to be conquered, and for its ancient princes and 
government to remain, though as tributary. 

With respect to the tribe of Judah during the captivity in Babylon, 
Cyrus, as we learn from Ezra i, 8, ordered the vessels of the temple to 
pe restored to “the prince of Judah.” ‘This shows that the tribe was 
kept distinct, and that it had its own internal government and chief. 
Under the dominion of the Asmonean kings, the Jews had their rulers, their 
elders, and their council, and so under the Romans. But soon after the 
death of Christ, all this was abolished, the nation dispersed, and the 
tribes utterly confounded. ‘Till our Lord came, and had accomplishea 
his work on earth, the tribe of Judah continued. This is matter of unques. 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, 185 


tionable historic fact. In a short time afterward it was dispersed and 
mingled with the common mass of Jews of all tribes and countries : this 
Is equally unquestionable. Now again we ask, could either human fore- 
sight determine this, or is the application of the event to the prophecy 
fanciful? The prediction was uttered in the very infancy of the state of 
Israel, by the father of the fathers of the tribes of that people. Ages 
passed away; the mightiest empires were annihilated ; ten of the chosen 
*ribes themselves were utterly dispersed into unknown countries ; ano. 
ter became so insignificant as to lose its designation ; one only remained 
which imposed its very name upon the nation at large, the object of public 
observation until the Messiah came, and that tribe was Judah, the tribe 
spoken of in the prediction, and it remained as it were only to make the 
fulfilment manifest, and was then confounded with the relics of the rest 
What prescience of countless contingencies, occurring in the intervening 
ages, does this imply?—A prescience truly, which can only belong 
to God. 

The predictions respecting the Jewish nation, commencing with those 
of Moses, and running through all their prophets, are too numerous to 
be adduced. One of the most instructive and convincing exercises to 
those who have any doubt of the inspiration of the Scriptures, would be, 
seriously and candidly to peruse them, and by the aid of those authors 
who have expressly and largely written on this subject, to compare the 
prophecies with their alleged fulfilment. ‘Three topics are prominent in 
the predictions of Moses and the prophets generally,—the frequent and 
gross departures of the Jews from their own law; their signal punish- 
ment in invasions, captivities, dispersions, oppressions, and persecutions ; 
and their final restoration to their own land. All these have taken place. 
Even the last was accomplished by the return from Babylon, though, in 
its eminent sense, it 1s still future. In pursuance of the argument, we 
shall show, that each of these was above human foresight and con- 
jecture. 

The apostacies and idolatries of this people were foretold by Moses 
before his death. “J know that after my death ye will utterly corrupt 
yourselves, and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you, and 
evil will befall you in the latter days,” Deut. xxxi, 29; and he accord. 
ingly prophetically declares their punishment. It is, perhaps, scarcely 
possible to fix upon a stronger circumstance than this prediction, to prove 
that Moses was truly commissioned by God, and did not pretend a 
Divine sanction in order to give weight to his laws and to his persona’ 
authority. The rebellious race whom he had first led into the desert, 
had died there; and the new generation was much more disposed to 
obey their leader. At the moment he wrote these words, appearances 
had a favourable aspect on the future obedience of the people. If this 
had not been the case, the last thought a merely political man would 


186 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES IPART 


have been disposed to indulge was, that his own favourite institutions 
should fall into desuetude and contempt; and much less would he finish 
nis public life by openly telling the people that he foresaw that event, 
even if he feared it. It may, indeed, be said, that he uttered this con- 
viction for the purpose of giving a colour to the threatenings which he 
pronounces against disobedience to his law, and that the object of those 
fearful menaces was to deter the people from departing from customs 
and rules which he was anxious, for the sake of his own fame, that they 
should observe. ‘To this we answer, that Moses could not expect any 
weight to be attached by the Israelites to his threat, that the Divine 
judgments would be inflicted upon them for not obeying his laws, unless 
their former rebellions had been immediately and signally marked by 
such visitations. Without this to support him, he would have appeared 
in a ridiculous, rather than in an impressive and sublime attitude before 
the people assembled to hear his last commands. For forty years his 
institutions had been often disobeyed, and if no inflictions of the Divine 
displeasure followed, what reasen had they to credit the menaces of 
Moses as to the future? But if such inflictions had resulted from their 
disobedience, every thing is rational and consistent in this part of the 
conduct of their leader. Let the infidel choose which of these positions 
he pleases. If he think that Moses aimed to deter them from departing 
from his institutions by empty threats, he ascribes an incredible ab- 
surdity to an unqvestionably wise, and, as infidels themselves contend, a 
very politic man; but if his predictive threats were grounded upon for- 
mer marked and acknowledged interpositions of Divine Providence, the 
only circumstance which could give them weight, he was God’s com- 
missioned leader, and, as he professed, an inspired prophet. 

It is a circumstance of great weight in the predictions of Moses 
respecting the punishment of the Jews, that these famines, pestilences, 
invasions, subjugations to foreign enemies, captivities, &c, are represented 
solely as the consequences of their vicious departures from God, and 
from his laws Now, who could foresee, except an inspired man, that 
such evils would in no instance take place,—that no famine, no blight, no 
mvasion would occur in Judea, except in obvious punishment of their 
offences against their law? What was there in the common course of 
things to prevent a small state, though observant of the precepts of its 
ywn religion, from falling under the dominion of more powerful neigh: 
bouring nations, except the special protection of God? and what but this 
could guard them from the plagues and famines to which their neigh- 
bours were liable? If the predictions of Moses were not inspired, they 
assume a principle which mere human wisdom and policy never takes 
into its calculations,—that of the connection of the national prosperity of 
a people, inseparably and infallibly, with obedience to their holy writings ; 
and because they assume that singular principle, the conclusion is in 


{apes 
* 


~ 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. {87 


favour uf their inspiration. For let us turn to the facts of the case. 
The sacred bocks of the Jews are historical as well as prophetic. The 
nistory too is distinct from the prophecy ; it is often written by other 
authors; and there is no mark at all of any designed accommodation of 
the one to the other. The singular simplicity of the historic narrative 
disproves this, as well as the circumstance, that a great part of it as 
recorded in the Old Testament is a transcript of their public records. 
Consult then this history, and in every instance of singular calemity we 
see a previous departure from the law of Moses; the one following the 
other, almost with the regularity and certainty of natural effects and 
causes! In this the predictions of Moses and the prophets are strikingly 
accomplished ; and a more than human foresight is proved. 

Let us look farther into the detail of these threatened punishments. 
Beside the ordinary inflictions of failing harvests, and severe diseases, 
in their own country, they were, according to the prophecies of Moses, 
Deut. xxviii, to be “ scattered among all people, from the one end of the 
earth even to the other ;” and where is the trading nation in which they 
are not, in Asia, Africa, and Europe?) Many are even to be found in 
the West Indies, and in the commercial parts of America. Who could 
foresee this but God; especially when their singular preservation as a 
distinct people, a solitary instance in the history of nations, is also im. 
plied? (9) They were to find “no ease” among these nations; and the 
almost constant and Jong-continued persecutions, robberies, and murder 
of Jews, not only in ancient nations, but especially among Christian 
nations of the middle ages, and in the Mohammedan states to this day, 
are in wonderful] accomplishment of this. ‘They were to be “a proverb 


> which has been in every place ful- 


and a bye-word among all nations,’ 
filled, but was surely above human intelligence to foresee; and “the 
stranger that is within thee shall get above thee very high, and thou shalt 
come very low.” For a comment on this, let the conduct of the “ stran- 
ger,” Turks and others, who inhabit Palestine, toward the Jews who 
remain there, be recollected,—the one party is indeed “ very high,” and 
he other “very Jow.” Other parts of this singular chapter present 
equally striking predictions, uttered more than three thousand years 
ago, as remarkably accomplished ; but there are some passages in it, 
which refer in terms so particular to a then distant event, the utter sub- 


version of their polity and nation by the Romans, as to demonstrate in 


(9) «« They have been dispersed among all countries. They have no common 
tie of locality or government to keep them together. All the ordinary principles 
of assimilation, which make law, and religion, and manners, so much a matter 
of geography, are in their instance suspended. And in exception to every thing 
which history has recorded of the revolutions of the species, we see in this won- 
derful race a vigorous priuciple of identity, which has remained in undiminished 
force for nearly two thousand years, and still pervades every shred and fragment 
of their widely scattered population ” (Cuatmers’s. Evidences.) 


185 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. _ [Part 


the most unequivocal manner the prescience of Him to whom all events, 


the most contingent, minute, and distant, are Known with absolute cer. - 


tainty. That the Romans are intended, in verse 49, by the nation brought 
from “the end of the earth,” distinguished by their well-known ensigr 

the eagle,’ and by their fierce and cruel disposition, is exceedingly 
probable: and it is remarkable, that the account which Moses gives of 
the horrors of the “ siege” of which he speaks, is exactly paralleled by 
those well known passages in Josephus, in which he describes the siege 
of Jerusalem by the Roman army. The last verse of the chapter seems 
indeed to fix the reference of the foregoing passages to the final destruc. 
tion of the nation by the Romans, and at the same time contains a pre- 
diction, the accomplishment of which cannot possibly be ascribed to 
accident. “ And the Lord shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships, 
by the way whereof I spake unto thee, Thou shalt see it no more again : 
and there. ye shall be sold unto your ememies for bondmen and bondwomen, 
and no man shall buy you.” On this Dr. Hales remarks, on the autho- 
rity of their own national historian, Josephus, “ Of the captives taken at 
the siege of Jerusalem, above seventeen years of age, some were sent 
to Egypt in chains, the greater part were distributed through the pro- 
vinces to be destroyed in the theatres, by the sword, and by wild beasts ; 
the rest under seventeen were sold for slaves, and that for a trifling sum, 
on account of the numbers to be sold, and the scarcity of buyers: so 
that at length the prophecy of Moses was fulfilled—‘ and no man shall 
buy.’ The part that were reserved to grace the triumph of Vespasian 
were probably transported to Italy in ‘ shzps’ or by sea, to avoid a pro 
digious land journey thither through Asia and Greece,—a circumstance 
which distinguished this invasion and captivity from the preceding by 
the Assyrians and Babylonians. In the ensuing rebellion, a part of the 
captives were sent by sea to Egypt, and several of the ships were wrecker 
on the coast.” 

Thus, at a distance of fifteen centuries, were these contingent circum. 
stances accurately recorded by the prophetic spirit of Moses—the tak- 
ing of innumerable Jews cuptive—their transport to Egypt—their being 
sold till the markets for slaves were glutted, and no more buyers were 
found, and embarked on board vessels, either to grace the triumph of 
their conqueror, or to find a market in different maritime ports. Is n 
possible that these numerous and minute circumstances can be referred 
to either happy conjectures or human foresight ? 

But Moses and other prophets agree, that, after all their captivities 
and dispersions, the Jews shall be again restored to their own land. 
This was, as we nave said, in one instance accomplished in their restor- 
ation by Cyrus and his successors ; after which they again became a 
considerable state. But who could foretell that, but He who determines 
the events of the world by his power and wisdom? Jeremiah fixes the 


- 


ae é 


rIRST. } THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 1&9 


duration of the captivity to seventy years; he did that so unequivocally, 
that the Jews in Babylon, when the time approached, began to prepare 
for the event. But there was nothing in the circumstances of the Baby- 
lonian empire when the prediction was uttered, to warrant the hope, 
much less to support a confident conjecture. Could the subversicn of 
that powerful empire by a then obscure people, the circumstance which 
broke the bondage of the Jews, have been foreseen by man? or when 
we consider the event as fulfilling so distinct a prophecy, can it be re- 
solved into ‘maginative interpretation? A future restoration however 
awaits this people, and will be to the world a glorious demonstration of 
the truth of prophecy. This being future, we cannot argue upon it. 
Three things are however certain:—the Jews themselves expect it; 
they are preserved by the providence of God a distinct people for thei 
country ; and their country, which i fact is possessed by no one, is pre. 
served for them. 

Without noticing numerous prophecies respecting ancient nations and 
cities, (1) the wonderful and exact accomplishment of which has been 
pointed out by various writers, and which afford numerous eminent in- 
stances of the prescience of contingent and improbable events, whose 


(1) No work has exhibited in so pleasing and comprehensive a manner the ful. 
filment of the leading prophecies of Scripture, and especially of the Old Testament, 
as Bishop Newton’s Dissertations on the Prophecies ; and the perusal of it may 
be earnestly recommended, especially to the young. His illustrations of the pro 
phecies respecting ancient Babylon are exceedingly interesting and satisfactory ° 
and still farther proofs of the wonderfully exact accomplishment of those prophe 
cies may be seen in a highly interesting Memoir on the Ruins of Babylon, by 
Claudius J. Rich, published in 1815. Immense ruins were visited by him near 
the supposed site of ancient Babylon, which probably are, though the matter can. 
not be certainly ascertained, the remains of that astonishing city, now indeed 
* swept with the besom of destruction.” He tells us too, that the neighbourhood 
is to the present a habitation only for birds and beasts of prey; that the dens of 
lions, with their slaughtered victims, are to be seen in many places; and that 
most of the cavities are occupied with bats and owls. It is thorefore impossible 
to reflect without awe upon the passage of Isaiah, written during the prosperity 
of Babylon, wherein he says, ‘‘ The wild beasts of the desert shall lie there, and 
their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and owls shall dwell there, and 
satyrs shall dance there.” The present ruins of that city also demonstrate, that 
the course of the Euphrates has been changed, probably in consequence of the 
channel formed by Cyrus; and the yielding nature of the soil demonstrates that 
such an operation could have been performed by a large army with great facility 
and «despatch. 

The ruins examined by Mr. Rich bear testimony to the immense extent of the 
eity as described by ancient authors. Vast masses of masonry, of both burnt and 
unburnt brick and bitumen, were observed in various excavations in these huge 
mountains of ruins, which are separated from each other by several miles. One 
is called by the Arabs, Birs Nimrond ; another the Kasr, or Palace ; and a third, 
which some have thought to be the ruins of the tower of Belus, is called by the 
natives Mugelib’, overturNeD, which expressive term is also sometimes applied 
to the mounds of the Kasr, 


190 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


evidence is so overwhelming, that, as in the case of the 1ustrious pro- 
phecies of Daniel, unbelievers have been obliged to resort to the subter- 
fuge of asserting, in opposition to the most direct proofs, that the pro- 
phecies were written after the events, we shall close our instances by 

*adverting to the prophecies respecting the Messiah,—the great end 
and object of the prophetic dispensation. Of these not a solitary in 
stance, or two, of an equivocal kind, and expressed only in figurative ox 
symbolic language, are to be adduced; but upward of one hundred pre- 
dictions, generally of very clear and explicit meaning, and each referring’ 
to some different circumstance connected with the appearing of Christ, 
his person, history, and his ministry, have been selected by divines, 
exclusive of typical and allusive predictions, (2) and those which in an 
ultimate and remote sense are believed to terminate in him. How are 
all these to be disposed of, if the inspiration of the Scriptures which con- 
tain them be denied? That these predictions are in books written many 
ages before the birth of our Saviour, is certain—the testimony of the 
Jews who reject Christ, amply proves this. That no interpolations have 
taken place to accommodate them to him, is proved, by the same predic- 
tions being found in the copies which are in the hands of the Jews, and 
which have descended to them from before the Christian era. On the 
other hand, the history of Jesus answers to these predictions, and exhi. 
bits their exact accomplishment. The Messiah was to be of the seed 
of David—born in Bethlehem—born of a virgin—an incarnation of 
Deity, God with us,—an eminent but unsuccessful teacher ;—he was to 
open the eyes of the blind, heal the lame and sick, and raise the dead— 
he was to be despised and rejected by his own countrymen; to be ar- 
raigned on false charges, denied justice, and condemned to a violent 
death—he was to rise from the dead, ascend to the right hand of God, 
and there being invested with power and authority, he was to punish his 
enemies, and establish his own spiritual kingdom, which shall never end. 
We do not enter into more minute predictions, for the argument is irre- 
sistible when founded on these alone: and we may assert that no man, 
or number of men, could possibly have made such conjectures. Con 
sidered in themselves, this is impossible. What rational man, or number 
of rational men, could now be found to hazard a conjecture that an in. 
carnation of Deity would occur in any given place and time—that this 
Divine Person should teach wisdom, work miracles, be unjustly put te 
death, rise again, and establish his religion? These are thoughts which 
never enter into the minds of men, because they are suggested by no 
experience, and by no probability arising out of the usual course of hu- 
man affairs; and yet if the prophets were not inspired, it would have 
been as impossible for them to have conceived such expectations, as for 
us ; and indeed much more so, seeing we are now familiar with a reli- 

(2) See note, p. 181 


ite et’ 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 191 


gion which asserts that such events have once occurred. If then sucii 
events lay beyond not only human foresight, but even human thought, 
chey can only be referred to inspiration. But the case does not close 
here. How shall we account, in the next place, for these circumstances 
all having met, strange as they are, in one person, and in one only 
among all the millions of men who have been born of woman,—and that 
person Jesus of Nazareth? He was of the house and lineage of David 
—he was born, and that by a singular event, in Bethlehen—he professed 
to be * God with us,” and wrought miracles to substantiate his claim. 
At his word or touch, the “eyes of the blind were opened,” “ the lame 
leaped as a hart,” the dumb spake, the sick were healed, and the dead 
lived, as the prophets had foretold. Of the wisdom of his teaching, his 
recorded discourses bear witness. His rejection and unjust death by his 
countrymen, are matters of historic fact ; his resurrection and ascension 
stand upon the lofty evidences which have been already adduced: the 
destruction of the Jewish nation, according to his own predictions, fol- 
lowed as the proof of the terror of his offended majesty ; and his “ king- 
dom” among men continues to this day. There is no possible means of 
evading the evidence of the fulfilment of these predictions in the person 
of our Lord, unless it could be shown that Jesus and his disciples, by 
some kind of concert, made the events of his life and death to corres- 
pond with the prophecies, in order to substantiate his claim to the Mes. 
siahship. No infidel has ever been so absurd as to hazard this opinion, 
except Lord Bolinbroke ; and his observations may be taken as a most 
triurnphant proof of the force of this evidence from prophecy, when an 
hypothesis so extravagant was resorted to by an acute mind, in order to 
evade it. ‘Lhis noble writer asserts, that Jesus Christ brought on his 
own death by a series of wilful and preconcerted measures, merely to 
give his disciples the triumph of an appeal to the old prophecies! But 
itis hypothesis does not reach the case; and to have succeeded, he 
Gught to have shown, that our Lord preconcerted his descent from 
}Javid—his being born of a virgin—his birth at Bethlehem—and his 
wonderful endowments of eloquence and wisdom: that by some means 
or other he wilfully made the Jews ungrateful to him who healed their 
sick and cleansed their lepers; and that he not only contrived his own 
death, but his resurrection, and his ascension also, and the spread of his 
religion in opposition to human opinion and human power, in order to 
give his disciples the triumph of an appeal to the prophecies! These 
subterfuges of infidels concede the point, and show that the truth cannot 
be denied but by doing the utmost violence tu the understanding. 

That wonderful series of particular prophecies respecting our Lord, 
copiaincu is tsaiah liii, will itlustrate the foregoing observations, and 
may propery c.cse this chapter. 

To this prophecy it cannot be objected, that its language is eyinboliel . 


192 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, [PAR1 


or that in more than a few beautiful metaphors, easily understood, it 18 
even figurative: its style is that of narrative ; it is also entire in itself, 
and unmixed with any other subject; and it evidently refers to one 
single person. So the ancient Jews understood it, and applied it to 
Messiah ; and though the modern Jews, in order to evade its force in 
the argument with Christians, allege that it describes the sufferings of 
their nation, and not of an individual, the objection is refuted by the 
terms of the prophecy itself. The Jewish people cannot be the sufferer, 
because he was to bear their griefs, to carry their sorrows, and to be 
wounded for their transgressions. ‘‘ He hath borne our griefs and car- 
ried ouR sorrows,’ &c; so that the person of the sufferer is clearly 
distinguished from the Jewish nation. Beside which, his death and 
burial are spoken of, and his sufferings are represented (verse 12) as 
voluntary ; which in no sense can apply to the Jews. “ Of himself, or 
of some other man,” therefore, as the Ethiopian eunuch rightly conceived, 
the prophet must have spoken. To some individual it must be applied ; 
to none but to our Lord can it be applied; and applied to him, the pro- 
phecy is converted into history itself. The prophet declares, that his 
advent and works would be a revealing of “the arm of the Lord,”—a 
singular display of Divine power and goodness; and yet, that a blind 
and incredulous people would not believe ‘the report.” Appearing in 
a low and humble condition, and not, as they expected their Messiah, 
in the pomp of eastern monarchy, his want of ‘ comeliness” and “ dest- 
rableness” in the eyes of his countrymen, and his rejection by them, are 
explicitly stated—* He was despised, and we esteemed him not.” He is 
farther described as “a man of sorrows and acquainted with griefs ;” 
yet his sufferings were considered by the Jews as judicial,—a legal 
punishment, as they contend to this day, for his endeavouring to seduce 
men from the law, and for which they had the warrant of God himself 
in his commands by Moses, that such seducers should be put to death. 
With what exactness are these sentiments of the Jews marked in the 
prophecy! We quote from the translation of Bishop Lowth. 
“Yet we thought him supcia.ty stricken, 
SMITTEN oF Gop, and afflicted.” 
Christ himself and his apostles uniformly represented his death as vica 


rious and propitiatory ; and this is predicted and confirmed, so to speak, 
by the evidence of this prophecy. 


‘‘ But he was wounded for our transgressions, 
He was smnitten for our iniquities ; 
The chastisement by which our peace is effected, was laid upon him; 
And by his bruises we are healed. 
We all of us like sheep have stray’d; 
We have turn’d aside, every one to his own way; 
And Jehovah hath made to light upon him the iniquity of us all, 
It was exacted and he was made answerable.” . 


*1KST.] * THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 192 


Who can read the next passage without thinking of Jesus before the 
founcil of the Jews, and the judgment seat of Pilate ? 


** As a lamb that is led to the slaugnier, 
And as a sheep before her shearers 
Is dumb; so he opened not his mouth. 
By an oppressive judgment he was taken off.” 
The very circumstances of his burial are given :— 
‘‘ And his grave was appointed with the wicked 
But with the rich man was his tomb.” 


fet, though thus laid in the grave, the eye of the prophet beholds his 
resurrection, ‘the joy set before him,” and into which he entered ; the 
distribution of spiritual blessings to his people, and his spiritual conquest 
of the nations of the earth, notwithstanding the opposition of “the 
mighty ;” and he enumerates these particulars with a plainness so won- 
derful, that, by merely an alteration of the tenses of the verbs, the whole 
migut be converted into an abridged view of what has occurred, and is 
now occurring under the Christian dispensation, in the furtherance of 


human salvation :— 
} 


If his soul shall make a propitiatory sacrifice 

He shall see a seed, which shall prolong their days, 

And the gracious purpose of Jehovah shall prosper in his hands. 
Of the travail of his soul he shall see (the fruit) and be satisfied ; 
By the knowledge of him shall my servant justify many ; 

For the punishment of their iniquities he shall bear. 

Therefore will I distribute to him the many for his portion , 
And the mighty people shall he share for his spoil; 

Because he pour’d his soui out unio death; 

And was number’d with the transgressors: 

And he bore the sin of many, 

And made intercession for the transgressors.” 


To all these predictions the words of a modern writer are applicable : 
« Let now the infidel, or the skeptical reader, meditate thoroughly and 
goberl7 upon these predictions. The priority of the records to the 
events admits of no question. The completion is obvious to every 
competent inquirer. Here then are facts. We are called upon to 
account for these facts on rational and adequate principles. Is human 
foresight equal to the task? Enthusiasm? Conjecture? Chance? Poli- 
tical contrivance? If none of these, neither can any other principle 
{hat may be devised by man’s sagacity, account for the facts; then. 
true philosophy, as well as true religion, will ascribe them to the inspt- 
‘ation of the Almighty. Every effect must have a cause.” (3) 


(3) Simpson’s Key to the Prophecies. See also a large collection of prophecies 
vith their fulfilment in the Appendix to vol. i, of Hogne’s Introduction to tke 
Scriptures 


Vor. I. 13 


2 


194 THEOLOG(Z AL INSTITUTES. ~ iPAR®S 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


OxssecTIONS To THE EvipENCE FROM PROPHECY CONSIDERED. 


Brsipe the objections which have been anticipated and answered in 
the last chapter, others have been made to the argument from prophecy, 
which, though exceed'ngly futile, ought to receive a cursory notice, lest 
any should think :hem of greater importance. 

It has been objected, as to some of the prophecies, that they were 
written after the event; as for instance, the prophecy of Isaiah in 
which the name of Cyrus is found, and the prophecies of Daniel. This 
allegation, standing as it does upon no evidence whatever, and being in- 
deed in opposition to contrary proof, shows the hopelessness of the cause 
of infidelity, and affords a lofty triumph to the evidence of prophecy. For 
the objector does in fact acknowledge, that these predictions are not 
obscure ; that the event exactly corresponded with them; and that they 
were beyond human conjecture. Without entering into those ques. 
tions respecting the date of the books of Isaiah and Daniel, which pro- 
perly belong to works on the canon of Scripture, we may observe, that 
the authors of this objection assert, but without giving the least proof, 
that Isaiah wrote his prophecies in order to flatter Cyrus, and that the 
book of Daniel was composed about the reign of Anriocuus Err 
PHANES. It is therefore admitted that both were extant, and in their 
present form, before the time of the Christian era; but if so, what end, 
we ask, is answered by the objection? ‘lhe Scriptures, as received by 
the Jews, were verified by the sentence of our Lord and his apostles ; 
and unless thew inspiration can ‘be disproved, the objection in question 
is a mere cavil. Before it can have any weight, the whole mass of 
evidence which supports the mission and Divine authority of our Saviour 
and the apostles, must be overthrown: and not till then can it in strict- 
ness of reasoning be maintained. But, not to insist on this, the asser- 
tion respecting Isaiah is opposed to positive testimony. The testimony 
of the prophet himself, who states that he lived “in the days of Uzziah, 
Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah ;” and the testimony of 
an independent witness, the author of the Second Book of Kings, in the 
twentieth chapter of which book [saiah is brought forward in connec. 
tion with a public event of the Jewish history—the dangerous sickness 
and recovery of the King Elezekiah. The proof is then 1s decisive as 
the public records of a kingdom can make it, that Isaiah wrote more 
than a hundred years before the birth of Cyrus. (4) 

(4) But if you will persevere in believing that the prophecy concernmg 
Cyrus was written after the event, peruse the burden of Babylon: was that also 
written after the event? Were the Medes then stir-ed up against Bahylon? 


Was Babylon, the glory of the kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees, tnen over. 
-hrown, and bezome as Sodom and Gomorrah? Was it then uninhabited? Was 


FIRST. | - THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 195 


The time, when Daniel lived and wrote is bound up in like manner 
with public history,—and that not only of the Jews, but of the Babylo. 
uians and Persians; and could not be antedated so as to impose upon 
the Jews, who received the book which bears his name into their canon, 
as the production of the same Daniel who had filled exalted stations in 
the courts of Nebuchadnezzar and his successors. In favour of a later 
date being assigned to the book of Daniel, it has been said, that it has 
many Greek terms, and that it was not translated by the LXX, the trans- 
lation now inserted in the Septuagint being by Turopottan. With 
respect to the Greek terms, they are chiefly found in the names of the 
musical instruments; and the Greeks acknowledge that they derived 
their music from the eastern nations. With respect to the second ob- 
jection, it is unfounded. The authors of the Septuagint did translate the 
book of Daniel, and their version is cited by CLemens Romanus, JusTin 
Martyr, and many of the ancient fathers; it occupied a column of the 
Hexapla of Origen, and is quoted by Jerome. The present Greek ver- 
sion by Theodotian inserted in the Septuagint, was made in the second 
century, and preferred as being more conformable to the original. ‘The 
repudiated version was published some years ago from an ancient MS. 
discovered at Rome. (5) 

The opponents of Scripture are fond of the attempt to lower the 
dignity and authority of the sacred prophecies by comparing them to the 
heathen oracles. The absolute contrast between them has already been 
pointed out ; (Vide chapter xvi ;) but a few additional observations may 
not be useless. 

Of the innumerable oracles which were established and: consulted b_ 
the ancient heathen, the most celebrated was the Delphic ; and we may, 
therefore, for the purpose of exhibiting the contrast more perfectly be- 
tween the Pythian oracle and the prophecies of Scripture, confine our 
remarks to that. 

The first great distinction lies in this, that none of the predictions ever 


it then neither fit for the Arabian’s tent nor the shepherd’s fold? Did the wild 
beasts of the desert then lie there? Wid the wild beasts of the islands then cry in 
their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant places? Were Nebuchad- 
nezzar and Belshazzar, the son and the grandson then cut off? Was Babylon 
then become a possession of the bittern and pools of water? Was it then swept 
with the besom of destruction, so swept that the world knows not now where to 
find it?” (Bishop Warson’s Apology.) 

(5) Porrnyry, in his books against the Christian religion, was the first te 
attack the prophecies of Daniel; and in modern times, CoL.ins, in his ‘‘ Scheme 
of literal Prophecy,” bent all his force against a book so pregnant with proofs 
of the truth of Christianity, and the inspiration of ancient prophecy. By two 
learned opponents his eleven objections were most satisfactorily refuted, and 
shown to be mere cavils—by Bishop CHanpuer in his ‘ Vindication” of his ‘* De- 
fence of Christianity,” and by Dr. Sam. Curanper in his ‘‘ Vindication of Daniel’s 
Prophecies.” 


196 CfHEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, [PAR1 


uttered by the Delpnic oracle went deep into futurity. They relate to 
events on the eve of taking place, and whose preparatory circumstances 
were known. ‘There was not even the pretence of foresight to the dis- 
tance of a few years; though had it been a hundred years, even that 
were a very limited period to the eye of inspired prophets, who looked 
through the course of succeeding ages, and gave proof by the very sweep 
and compass of their predictions, that they were under the inspirations 
of Him to whom “a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years 
as one day.” 

A second contrast lies in the ambiguity of the responses. The pro- 
phecies of Scripture are sometimes obscure, though this does not apply 
to the most eminent of those which have been most signally fulfilled, as 
we have already seen; but they never equivocate. For this the Pythian 
oracle was notorious. Historians relate that Crassus, who had expended 
large sums upon the agents of this delusion, was tricked by an equivo- 
cation ; through which, interpreting the response most favourably for 
himself, he was induced to make an unsuccessful war on Cyrus. In his 
subsequent captivity he repeatedly reproached the oracle, and charged 
it with falsehood. The response delivered to Pyrruvus was of the same 
kind; and was so expressed as to be true, whether Pyrrhus conquered 
the Romans or the Romans Pyrrhus. Many other instances of the same 
kind are given; not to mention the trifling, and even bantering and jocose 
oracles, which were sometimes pronounced. (6) 

The venality, wealth, and servility of the Delphic oracle, present an- 
other contrast to the poverty and disinterestedness of the Jewish prophets, 
whom no gifts could bribe, and no power awe in the discharge of their 
duty. Demosthenes, in one of his speeches to the Athenians, publicly 
charges this oracle with being “ gained over to the interests of King 
Philip ;” and the Greek historians give other instances in which it had 
been corrupted by money, and the prophetess sometimes deposed for 
bribery, sometimes for lewdness. 

Neither threats nor persecutions had any influence with the Jewish 
prophets ; but it would seem that this celebrated oracle of Apollo was 
not even proof against raillery. At first it gave its answers in verse : 


(6) Eusebius has preserved some fragments of a philosopher called GEnomaus’ 
who, out of resentment for his having been so often fooled by the oracles, wrote 
an ample confutation of all their impertinences: ‘*‘ When we come to consult 
thee,” says he to Apollo, ‘‘ifthou seest what is in futurity, why dost thou use ex- 
pressions that will not be understood? Ifthou dost, thou takest pleasure in abusing 
us, if thou dost not, be informed of us, and learn to speak more clearly. TI tell 
thee, that if thou intendest an equivoque, the Greek word whereby thou affirmedst 
that Creesus should overthrow a great empire, was ill chosen; and that it could 
signify nothing but Cresus’s conquering Cyrus. If things must necessarily come 
to pass, why dost thou amuse us with thy ambiguities? What dost thou, wretch 
as thou art, at Delphi; employed in muttering idle prophecies ?” 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, 197 


but the Epicureans, Cynics, and others laughing so much at the poor- 
ness of the versification, it fell at length into prose. « It was surprising,” 
sail these philosophic wits, “that Apollo, the god of poetry, should be a 
much worse poet than Homer, whom he himself had inspired.” Plu. 
tarch considers this as a principal cause of the declension of the oracle 
of Delphos. Doubtless it had declined much in credit in his day ; and 
tne farther spread of Christianity completed its ruin. 

Can then the prophecies of Scripture be paralleled with these dark, and 
venal, and delusive oracles, without impiety ? and could any higher honour 
be wished for the Jewish prophets, than the comparison into which they 
are thus brought with the agents of paganism at Delphos and other 
places? ‘They had recourse to no smooth speeches, no compliances with 
the tempers and prejudices of men. They concealed no truth which 
they were commissioned to declare, however displeasing to their nation 
and hazardous to themselves. They required no caves, or secret places 
of temples, from which to utter their messages ; and those who consulted 
them were not practised upon by the bewildering ceremonies imposed 
upon inquirers at Delphos. ‘They prophesied in streets, and courts, and 
palaces, and in the midst of large assemblies. ‘Their predictions had a 
clear, determinate, and consistent sense; and they described future 
events with so many particularities of time and place, as made it 
scarcely possible that they should be misunderstood or misapplied. 

Pure and elevated as was the character of the Jewish prophets, the 
hardihood of infidelity has attempted to asperse their character ; because 
it appears from Scripture story, that there were false prophets and bad 
men who bore that name. 

Balaam is instanced, though not a Jewish prophet ; but that he was 
always a bad man, wants proof. The probability is, that his virtue was 
overcome by the offers of Balak ; and the prophetic spirit was not taken 
away from him, because there was an evident design on the part of 
God to make his favour to Israel more conspicuous, by obliging a reluct- 
ant prophet to bless, when he would have cursed, and that in the very 
presence of a hostile king. When that work was done, Balaam was 
consigned to his proper punishment. 

With respect to the Jewish false prophets, it is a singular proceeding 
to condemn the true ones for their sake, and to argue that because bad 
men assumed their functions, and imitated their manner, for corrupt 
purposes, the universally-received prophets of the nation,—men who, 
from the proofs they gave of their inspiration, had their commission 
acknowledged even by those who hated them, and their writings 
received into the Jewish canon,—were bad men also. Let the charac- 
ters of Moses, Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, Nathan, Isaiah, Jeremiah, (7) 


’7) A weak attempt has been made by some infidel writers to fasten a charoe 


198 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


Daniel, and the authors of the other prophetical sooks, be considered ; 
and how true are the words of the apostle, that they were “ HOLY men 
of old,” as well as that they were “ moved by the Holy Ghost!” ‘That 
the prophets who prophesied “ smooth things’? were never considered as 
true prophets, except for a time by a few who wished to have their hopes 
flattered, is plain from this—none of their writings were preserved by 
the Jews. Their predictions would not abound in reproofs and threat- 
enings, like those of Isaiah and Jeremiah; and yet the words of those 
prophets, who were personally most displeasing to the Jews of the age 
in which they lived, have been preserved, while every flattering prophecy 
was suffered to fall into oblivion almost as soon as it was uttered. Can 
we have a more decisive proof than this, that the false prophets were a 
perfectly distinct class of men,—the venal imitators of these “ holy men 
of old,” but who never gave, even to those most disposed to listen to 
their delusive prophecies, a satisfactory proof of their prophetic com- 
mission ? 

Attempts have been made to show that a few of the prophecies of 
Scripture have failed. The following are the principal instances :— 

It has been said that a false promise was made to Abraham, when it 
was promised to him, that his descendants should possess the territory 
which lies between the Euphrates and the river of Egypt. But this 
objection is clearly made in ignorance of the Scriptures ; for the fact is, 
that David conquered that territory, and that the dominions of Solomon 
were thus extended. (Vide 2 Sam. viii; 1 Chron. xviii.) 

Voltaire objects, that the prophets made promises to the Jews of the 
most unbounded riches, dominion, and influence ; insomuch that they 
could only have been accomplished by their conquering or proselyting 
the entire of the habitable globe. On the contrary, he says, they have 
lost their possessions instead of obtaining either property or power, and 
therefore the prophecies are false. 

The case is here unfairly stated. ‘The prophets never made s‘ich 
exaggerated promises. ‘They predict many spiritual blessings tu be 
bestowed in the times of Messiah, under figures drawn from worldly 
opulence and power, the figurative language of which no atteutive 
reader can mistake. ‘They also promise many civil advantages, but 
only conditionally on the obedience of the nation; and they speak in 
high terms of the state of the Jewish nation, upon its final restoration, 
for which objectors must wait before they can determine the predictions 
to be false. But did not Voltaire know, that the loss of their own 
country by the Jews, of which he speaks, was predicted in the clearest 
manner? and would he not have seen, had he not been blinded by his 


of falsehood on Jeremiah, in the case of his confidential interview with King 
Zedekiah, A satisfactory refutation is given by Bishop W arson in his answer t- 
Paine, letter vi. 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 199 


prejudices, that his very objection acknowledges the truth of prophecy 1 
The promises of the prophets have not been falsified in the instance 
given, but their threats have been signally fulfilled. 

Paine, following preceding writers of the same sentiments, asserts the 
prophecy of Isaiah to Ahaz not to have been verified by the event, and 
is thus answered by Bishop Watson: (Apology, letter v:) “The pro- 
pbecy is quoted by you, to prove, and it is the only instance you produce, 
that Isaiah was ‘a lying prophet and impostor.’ Now I maintain, 
that this very instance proves that he was a true prophet and no im- 
postor. ‘The history of the prophecy, as delivered in the seventh chapter, 
is this,—Rezin king of Syria, and Pekah king of Israel, made war upon 
Ahaz king of Judah; not merely, or, perhaps, not at all for the sake of 
plunder, or the conquest of territory, but with a declared purpose of 
making an entire revolution in the government of Judah, of destroying 
the royal house of David, and of placing another family on the throne. 
Their purpose is thus expressed —‘ Let, us go up against Judah, and vex 
it, and let us make a breach therein for us, and set a king in the midst 
of it, even the son of Tabeal.’ Now what did the Lord commission 
Isaiah to say to Ahaz? Did he commission hitn to say, The kings shall 
not vex thee ? No.—The kings shall not conquer thee ? No.—The kings 
shall not succeed against thee? No. He commissioned him to say— 
‘It (the purpose of the two kings) shall not stand, neither shall it come 
‘o pass.” I demand—Did it stand, did it come to pass? Was any 
‘evolution effected? Was the royal house. of David dethroned and 
destroyed? Was Tabeal ever made king of Judah? No. The pro- 
phecy was perfectly accomplished. You say, ‘Instead of these two 
kings failing in their attempt against Ahaz, they succeeded: Ahaz was 
defeated and destroyed.’ I deny the fact: Ahaz was defeated but not 
destroyed ; and even the ‘two hundred thousand women, and sons and 
daughters,’ whom you represent ‘as carried into captivity, were not car- 
ried into captivity : they were made captives, but they were not carried 
into captivity; for the chief men of Samaria, being admonished by a 
prophet, would not suffer Pekah to bring the captives into the land,— 
_¢ They rose up, and took the captives, and with the spoil clothed all that 
were naked among them, and arrayed them and shod them, and gave 
them to eat and to drink, and anointed them, and carried all the feeble 
of them upon asses, (some humanity, you see, among those Israelites, 
whom you every where represent as barbarous brutes, ) and brought them 
to Jericho, the city of palm trees, to their brethren,’ 2 Chron. xxvii, 15. 
The kings did fail in their attempt: their attempt was to destroy the 
nouse of David, and to make a revolution : but they made no revolution ; 
they did not destroy the house of David, for Ahaz slept with his fathers ; 
and Hezekiah, his son, of the house of David, reigned in his stead.” — - 

A similar attempt is made by the same writer te fix a charge of false 


200 THEOLOGICAL (NSTITUTES, [PART 


vaticination upon Jeremiah, and is thus answerec py the bishop of 
Llandaff: “In the thirty-fourth chapter is a prophecy of Jeremiah to 
Zedekiah, in these words, verse 2, Thus saith the Lord, Behold T will 
give this city into the hands of the king of Babylon, and will burn it with 
fire; and thou shalt not escape out of his hand, but thou shalt surely be 
taken, and delivered into his hand! and thine eyes shall behold the eyes 
of the king of Babylon, and he shall speak with thee mouth to mouth, and 
thou shalt go to Babylon. Yet hear the word of the Lord, O Zedekiah 
king of Judah: thus saith the Lord, Thou shalt not die by the sword, but 
thou shalt die in peace ; and with the burnings of thy fathers, the former 
kings that were before thee, so shail they burn odours for thee, and will 
lament thee, saying, Ah, lord! for I have pronounced the word saith the 
Lord.—Now, instead of Zedekiah beholding the eyes of the king of 
Babylon, and speaking with him mouth to mouth, and dying in peace, 
and with the burnings of odours at the funeral of his fathers, (as 
Jeremiah hath declared the Lord himself had pronounced,) the reverse, 
according to the fifty-second chapter, was the case: it is there stated, 
(verse 10,) That the king of Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah before 
his eyes ; then he put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and bound him in chains, 
and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison till the day of his death. 
What can we say of these prophets, but that they are impostors and 
liars?” I can say this—that the prophecy you have produced was ful- 
filled in al] its parts; and what then shall be said of those who call 
Jeremiah a liar and an impostor? Here then we are fairly at issue— 
you affirm that the prophecy was not fulfilled, and I affirm that it was 
fulfilled in all its parts. ‘I will give this city into the hands of the king 
of Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire :’ so says the prophet. What 
says the history? ‘They (the forces of the king of Babylon) burnt the 
house cf God, and brake down the walls of Jerusalem, and burnt all the 
palaces thereof with fire,’ 2 Chron. xxxvi, 19.—‘ Thou shalt not escape 
out of his hand, but thou shalt surely be taken and delivered into his 
hand :’ so says the prophet. What says the history? ‘The men of 
war fled by night, and the king went the way toward the plaiz, and the 
army of the Chaldees pursued after the king, and overtook him in the 
plains of Jericho; and all his army were scattered from him: so they 
teak the king, and brought him up to the king of Babylon, to Riblah ’ 
% Kings xxv, 5. The prophet goes on, ‘Thine eyes shall behold tha 
eyes of the king of Babylon, and he shall speak with thee mouth te 
mouth.’ No pleasant circumstance this to Zedekiah, who had provoked 
the king of Babylon by revolting from him. The history says, ‘The 
king of Babylon gave judgment upon Zedekiah,’ or, as it is more literally 
rendered from the Hebrew, ‘spake judgments with him at Riblah.’ 
The prophet concludes this part with, ‘And thou shalt go to Babylon :’ 
the history says, ‘The king of Babylon bound him in chains, and | 


THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. ver ahT) 


carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison till the day of his aeath, 
Jer. lii, 11.-—* Thou shalt not die by the sword.’ He did not die by the 
sword, he did not fall in battle. —* But thou shalt die in peace.’ He cid 
die in peace, he neither expired on the rack nor on the scaffold; was 
neither strangled nor poisoned, no unusual fate of captive kings ; he died 
peaceably in his bed, though that bed was in a prison.—‘ And with the 
burnings of thy fathers shall they burn odours before thee.’ I cannot 
prove from the history that this part of the prophecy was accomplished, 
ior Can you prove that it was not. The probability is, that it was ac- 
complished ; and I have two reasons on which I ground this probability. 
Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, to say nothing of other 
Jews, were men of great authority in the court of the king of Babylon, 
before and after the commencement of the imprisonment of Zedekiah ; 
and Daniel continued in power till the subversion of the kingdom of 
Babylon by Cyrus. Now it seems to me to be very probable, that 
Daniel and the other great men of the Jews, would both have inclina- 
tion to request, and influence enough with the king of Babylon to obtain 
permission to bury their deceased prince Zedekiah, after the manner of 
his fathers. But if there had been no Jews at Babylon of consequence 
enough to make such a request, still it is probable that the king of 
Babylon would have ordered the Jews to bury and lament their departed 
prince, after the manner of their country. Monarchs, like other men, 
are conscious of the instability of human condition; and when the 
pomp of war has ceased, when the insolence of conquest is abated, and 
the fury of resentment is subsided, they seldom fail to revere royalty even 
in its ruins, and grant, without reluctance, proper obsequies to the 
remains of captive kings.” 

Ezekiel is assaulted in the same manner. “You quote,” says the 
same writer, “a passage from Ezekiel, in the twenty-ninth chapter, 
where speaking of Egypt, it is said—‘ No foot of man shall pass through 
it, nor foot uf beast shall pass through it, neither shall it be inhabited 
forty years :’ this, you say, ‘ never came to pass, and consequently it is 
false, as all the books I have already reviewed are.” Now that the in. 
vasion predicted did come to pass, we have, as Bishop Newton observes, 
‘the testimonies of Megasthenes and Berosus, two heathen historians, 
who lived about 300 years before Christ; one of whom affirms, ex- 
pressly, that Nebuchadnezzar conquered the greater part of Africa ; and 
the other affirms it in effect. in saying, that when Nebuchadnezzar 
heard of the death of his father, having settled his affairs in Egypt, and 
sommitted the captives whom he took in Egypt to the care of some of 
his friends to bring them after him, he hasted directly to Babylon.’ 
And if we had been possessed of no testimony in support of the pro- 
paecy, it would have been a hasty conclusion, that the prophecy never 
came to pass; the history of Egypt, at so remote a period, being no 


"202 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES RT 
where accurately and circumstantially related. I admit that no period 
can be pointed out from the age of Ezekiel to the present, in which 
there was no foot of man or beast to be seen for forty years in all Egypt; 
but some think that only a part of Egypt is here spoken of; (8) and 
surely you do not expect a literal accomplishment of a hyperbolical ex- 
pression, denoting great desolation ; importing that the trade of Egypt 
which was carried on then, as at present, by caravans, by the foot of mar, 
and bcast, should be annihilated.” 

To this we may add, that the passage respecting the depopulation of 
Egypt stands in the midst of an extended prophecy, which has received 
the most marked fulfilment, and illustrates, perhaps as strikingly as any 
thing which can be adduced, the cavilling spirit of infidelity, and proves 
that truth could never be the object of discussions thus conducted. Here 
is a passage which has some obscurity hanging over it. No one how- 
ever can prove that it was not accomplished, even so fully that the 
expressions might be used without violent hyperbole ; for the invasion 
of Nebuchadnezzar was one of the same sweeping and devastating 
character as his invasion and conquest of Judea: and we know that the 
greater part of the inhabitants of that country were destroyed, or led 
captive, and that the land generally remained untilled for seventy years, 
though not absolutely left without inhabitant. In the common language 
of men, Judea might be said not to be inhabited, so prodigious was the 
excision of its people; and in such circumstances, from the total ces- 
sation of all former intercourse, commercial and otherwise, between the 
different parts of the kingdom, it might also, without exaggeration, be 
said, that the foot of man and beast did not “ pass THROUGH it ;” their 
going from one part to another on business, or for worship at Jerusalem, 
being wholly suspended. Now, as we have no reason to suppose the 
Babylonian monarch to have been more merciful to Egypt than to Judea, 
the same expressions in a popular sense might be used in respect of that 
country. Here however infidelity thought a cavil might be raised, and 
totally —may we not say wilfully ?—overlooked a prediction immediately 
following, which no human sagacity could conjecture, and against whicl 
it is in vain to urge, that it was written after the event: for the accon 
plishment of the prophecy runs on to the present day, and is as palpable 
and obvious as the past history, and the present volitical state of that 
country—-“ Egypt shall be the basest of the kingdoms, neither shall i 


(8) The opinion of the bishop, that not the whole of what is now called Egypt 
was intended in the prophecy, seems to derive confirmation from the following 
passages in Richardson’s Travels in Egypt in 1817 :—‘* The Delta, according to 
the tradition of the Jonians, is the only part that is, strictly speaking, entitled 
to be called Egypt, which is hieroglyphically represented by the figure of a heart, 
no unapt similitude.”—‘* The principal places mentioned in our sacrea writings, 
Zoan, Noph, and Tophanes, are all referable to the Delt#. Probably little of 
thein remains.” 


FLRST. | THBOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 203 


exalt wtself any more above the nations—there shall be no more a prince 
of the land of Egypt.” (Vide Ezek. xxix and xxx.) It is more than 
two thousand years since the prophecy was delivered, and Egypt has 
never recovered its liberties, but is to this day under the yoke of foreigners. 
It was cunquered by the Babylonians ; then by the Persians; and in suc- 
cession passed under the dominion of the Macedonians, Romans, Sara 
cens, Mamelnes, and Turks. No native prince of Egypt has ever 
restored his country to independence, and ascended the throne of his 
ancestors; and the descendants of the ancient Egyptians are to this 
hour in the basest and most oppressed condition. Yet in Egypt the 
human mind had made some of its earliest and most auspicions ¢ “orts. 
The stupendous monuments of art and power, the ruins of which lie 
piled upon the banks of the Nile, or still defy the wastes of time, attest 
the vastness of the designs, and the exicnt of the power of its princes. 
Egypt, too, was possessed of great natural advantages. Its situation was 
singularly calculated to protect it against foreign invasion; while its 
great fertility promised to secure the country it enriched from poverty, 
baseness, and subjection. Yet after a long course of grandeur, and in 
contradiction to its natural advantages, Ezekiel pronounced that the 
kingdom should be “the basest of all kingdoms,” and that there shoulc 
be “no more a prince of the land of Egypt.” So the event has been 
and so it remains; and that this wonderful prophecy should be passec. 
over by infidels in silence, while they select from it a passage whick 
promised to give some colour to objection, is deeply characteristic of 
the state of their minds. It is not from deficiency of evidence that the 
word of God is rejected by them. ‘The evil is not the want of light, 
but the love of darkness. 

Much ridicule has been cast upon the prophets for those significant 
actions by which they illustrated their predictions; as when Jeremiak 
hides his linen girdle in a hole of the rock, and breaks a potter’s vesse 
in the sight of the people; when Ezekiel weighs the hair of his heac 
and beard in balances, with many other instances familiar to those whe 
read the Scriptures. But this ridicule can only proceed from ignorance. 
In the early ages of the world, the deficiency of language was often 
supplied by signs; and when language was improved, “the practice 
remained,” says Bishop Warburton, “after the necessity was over ; 
especially among the easterns, whose natural temperament inclince 
them to this mode of conversation. The charges then of absurdity and 
fanaticism brought against the prophets, vanish of themselves. The 
absurdity of an action consists in its being extravagant and insignificative ; 
but use and a fixed application made tle actions in question both sober 
and pertinent. The fanaticism of an action consists in fondness for 
such actions as are unusual, and for foreign modes of speech ; but those 
of the prophets were idiomatic and familiar.” We may add, that several 


204 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. {PART 


of these actions were performed in vision; and that, considering the 
genius of the people who were addressed, they were calculated strongly 
to excite their attention, the end for which they were adopted. 

Such are the principal objections which have been made to Scripture. 
prophecy, as the proof of Scripture truth. That they are so few and 
so feeble, when enemies so prying and capable have employed them. 
selves with so much misplaced zeal to discover any vulnerable part, is the 
triumph of truth. Their futility has been pointed out; and the whole 
weight of the preceding evidence in favour of the truth of the Old and 
New Testaments, remains unmoved. We have, indeed, but glanced at 
a few of these extraordinary revelations of the future, for the sake, not 
of exhibiting the evidence of prophecy, which would require a distinct 
volume, but of explaining its nature and pointing out its force. ‘T’o the 
prophecies of the Old Testament, the attentive inquirer will add those 
of our Lord and his apostles, which will appear not less extraordinary in 
themselves, nor less illustrious in their fulfilment, so far as they have 
received their accomplishment. Many prophecies both of the Old and 
New Testament evidently point to future times, and this kind of evi- 
dence will consequently accumulate with the lapse of ages, and may be 
among the means by which Jews, Mohammedans, and pagans. shall be, 
turned to the Christian faith. At all events, prophecy even unfulfilled 
now answers an important end. It opens our prospect into the future 
and if the detail is obscure, yet, notwithstanding the mighty contest 
which is still going on between opposing powers and principles, we see 
how the struggle will terminate, and know, to use a prophetic phrase, 
that “ at eventime it shall be light.” 


CHAPTER XIX. 


INTERNAL Evipence of the Truth of Scripture—Co.LLaTERAL 
EvIpENcE. 

Tue internal evidence of a revelation from God has been stated to be 
that which arises from the apparent excellence and beneficial tendency 
of the doctrine. (Vide chap. ix.) This at least is its chief charac- 
teristic, though other particulars may alee be included in this species of 
proof, and shall be adduced. 

The reader will recollect the distinction made in the chapter just 
referred to, between rational and authenticating evidence. It has peen 
observed, that there are some truths made known to us through the 
medium of a revelation from God, which, though in their nature undis- 
coverable by the unassisted faculties of man, yet, when once revealed, 
carry to our reason, so far as they are of « nature to be comprehendea 
by it, the demonstration which accompames truth of any other kind 


Do 


BIiRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 20a 


(Vide chap. ix.) But it is only within the limit just mentioned that this 
position holds good; for such truths only raust he understood as are 
accompanied with reasons or rational proofs in the revelation itself, or 
which, when once suggested to the mind, directs its thoughts and 
observations to surrounding facts and circumstances, or to established 
triyhs to which they are capable of being compared, and by which they 
are c firmed. The internal evidence vf the Holy Scriptures, therefore, 
as far as doctrine is concerned, is restrained to truths of this class. Of 
other truths revealed to us in the Bible, and those in many instances 
fundamental to the system of Christianity, we have no proof of this 
kind ; but they stand on the firm basis of Divine attestation, and suffer 
no diminution of their authority because the reasons of them are either 
hidden from us for purposes of moral discipline, or because they trans- 
cend our faculties. If we had the reasons of them before us, they 
would not be more authentic, though to the understanding they would 
be more obvious. Such are the doctrines of a trinity of persons in the 
unity of the Godhead ; of the hypostatic union of the two natures in 
Christ ; of his Divine and eternal Sonship, &c. Such are many facts 
in the Divine government—as the permission of evil, and the long appa- 
rent abandonment of heathen nations—the unequal religious advantages 
afforded to individuals as well as nations—and many of the circum. 
atances of our individual moral trial upon earth. Of the truth of these 
doctrines, and the fitness of these and many other facts, we have no 
internal evidence whatever; but a very large class of truths which are 
found in the revelations of Scripture, afford more or less of this kind of 
proof, and make their appeal to our reason as well as to our faith ;—in 
other words, their reasonableness is such, that though the great demon. 
stration does not rest upon that, it affords an additional argument why 
they should be thankfully received, and heartily credited. 

The first and fundamental doctrine of Scripture is, the existence of 
God; the great and the sole First Cause of all things; eternal, self 
existent, present in all places, knowing all things; infinite in power 
and wisdom; and perfect in goodness, justice, holiness, and truth. 
That this view of the Divine Being, for which we are indebted to the 
Scriptures alone, presents itself with powerful rational demonstration to 
the mind of man, is illustriously shown by that astonishing change of 
opinion on this great subject which took place in pagan nations upon 
the pr mulgation of Christianity, and which in Europe continues to this 
day substantially unaltered. Not only those gross notions which pre- 
vailed among the vulgar, but the dark, uncertain, and contradictory 
researches of the philosophers of different schools have passed away ; 
and the truth respecting God, stated in the majesty and simplicity of 
the Scriptures, has been, with few exceptions, universally received, and 
that among enlightened Deists themselves. These discoveries of revela- 


206 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, [PART 


lion aave satisfied the human mind <n this great and primary doctrine ; 
and have given it a resting place which it never before found, and from 
which, if it ever departs, it finds no demonstration until it returns to the 
“marvellous light” into which revealed religion has introduced us.” A 
class of ideas, the most elevated and sublime, and which the most pro- 
found minds in former times sought without success, have thus become 
familiar to the very peasants in Christian nations. Nothing can be a 
more striking proof of the appeal which the Scripture character of God. 
makes to the unsophisticated reason of mankind. (9) ‘ 

Uf the state and condition of MAN as it is represented in our holy 
writings, the evidence from fact, and from the consciousness of our own 
bosoms, is very copious. What man is, in his relations to God his maker 
and governor, we had never discovered without revelation; but now 
this is made known, confirmatory fact crowds in on every side, and 
affords its evidence of the truth of the doctrine. 

The Old and New Testaments agree in representing the human race 
as actually vicious, and capable, without moral check and control, of 
the greatest enormities; so that not only individual happiness, but 
social also, is constantly obstructed or endangered. To this the history 
of all ages bears witness, and present experience gives its testimony.— 
All the states of antiquity crumbled down, or were suddenly over- 
whelmed, by their own vices; and the general character and conduct 
of the people which composed them may be read in the works of 
their historians, poets, and satirists, which have been transmitted to our 
times. ‘These, as to the Greeks and Romans, fully bear out the dark- 
est colouring of their moral condition to be found in the well known first 
chapter of St. Pauls Npistle to the Church at Rome, and other pas 
sages in his various epistles. ‘To this day, the same representation 
depicts the condition of almost all pagan countries, and, in many respects 
too, some parts of Christendom, where the word of God has been hid. 
den from the people, and its moral influence, consequently, has not 
been suffered to develope itself. In those countries also where that 


(9) The Scripture character of the Divine Being is thus strikingly drawn out 
by Dr. A. Clarke in his note on Gen. i, 1 :— 

“The eternal, independent, and self-existent Being. The, Being whose pur. 
poses and actions spring from himself, without foreign motive or influence: he 
who is absolute in dominion; the most pure, most simple, and most spiritual cf 
ail essences : infinitely benevolent, beneficent, true, and holy: the cause of all 
being, the upholder of all things; infinitely happy, because infinitely good; and 
eternally self sufficient, needing nothing that he has made. [llimitable in his 
immensity, inconceivable in his mode of existence, and indescribable in his 
essence: known fully only to himself, because an infinite mind can only ‘e 
comprehended by itself. In a word, a Being who, from his infinite wisdon., 
cannot err or be deceived ; and who, from his infinite goodness, can do nothing 
but what is eternally jist, right, and kind.” 


TRST.] THEOLOGICAL INSYITUTES. 207 


corrective has been most carefully applied, though exalted beyond com. 
parison in just, honourable, benevolent, and sober principles and habits, 
along with the frequent occurrence of numerous and gross actual 
crimes, the same appetites and passions may be seen in constant con- 
test with the laws of the state; with the example of the virtuous ; and 
the controlling influence of the word of God, preached by faithful minis. 
ters, taught as a part of the process of education, and spread through 
society by the multiplication of its copies since the invention of printing. 
The Holy Scriptures therefore characterize man only as he is actually 
found in all ages, and in all places to the utmost bounds of those geogra- 
phical discoveries which have been made through the adventurous spirit 
of modern navigators. 

But they not only assume men to be actually vicious, but vicious in 
consequence of a moral taint in their nature,—originally and inevitably 
so, but for those provisions of grace and means of sanctity of which 
they speak; and as this assumption is the basis of the whole scheme 
of moral restoration, through the once promised seed of the woman, and 
the now actually given Jesus, the Saviour, so they constantly remind 
him that he 1s “born in sin, and shapen in iniquity,’ and that, being 
born of the flesh, “he cannot please God.” What is thus represented 
as doctrine appeals to our reason through the evidence of unquestiona- 
ble fact. The strong tendency of man to crime cannot be denied. 
Civil penal laws are enacted for no other purpose than to repress 
it; they are multiplied in the most civilized states to shut out the 
evil in ail those new directions toward which the multiplied relations of 
man, and his increased power, arising from increased intelligence, have 
given it its impulse. Every legal deed, with its seals and witnesses 
bears testimony to that opinion as to human nature which the experience 
of man has impressed on man ; and history itself is a record chiefly of 
human git, because examples of crime have every where and at all 
times been much more frequent than examples of virtue. This ten 
dency te evil, the Scriptures tell us, arises from “the heart,’—the nature 
and disposition of man; and it is not otherwise to be accounted for.— 
Some indeed have represented the corruption of the race, as the result 
of association and example; but if men were naturally inclined ta 
good, and averse to evil, how is it that not a few individuais only, but 
the whole race have become evil by mutual association? This would 
be to make the weaker cause the more efficient, which is manifestly 
absurd. It is contrary too to the reason of the case, that the example 
and association of persons naturally well disposed, should produce any 
other effect than that of confirming and maturing their good disposi 
tions; as it is the effect of example and association, among persons of 
similar tastes and of similar pursuits, to confirm and improve the habit 
which gives rise to them. As little plausibilitv is there in the opinion 


208 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


which would account for this general corruption from bad education.— 
How, if man in all ages had been rightly affected in his moral inclina- 
tions, did a course of deleterious education commence? How, if com. 
menced, came it, that what must have been so abhorrent to a virtuously 
disposed community was not arrested, and a better system of instruc. 
tion introduced? But the fact itself may be denied, as the worst edu. 
cation inculcates a virtue above the general practice, and no course of 
education was ever adopted purposely to encourage immorality. In the 
Scriptures alone we find a cause assigned which accounts for the phe- 
nomenon, and we are bound therefore by the rules of philosophy itself 
to admit it. It is this, that man is by NaTuRE prone to evil; and as it 
would be highly unreasonable to suppose, that this disposition was im- 
planted in him by his benevolent and holy Maker, we are equally bound 
in reason to admit the Scripture solution of the rat of the human 
race from a higher and better state. 

A third view of the condition of man contained in the Scriptures, 1s, 
that he is not only under the Divine authority, but that the government 
of heaven as to him is of a mixed character; that he is treated with 
severity and with kindness also ; that considered both as corrupt in his 
nature and tendencies, and as in innumerable instances actually offending, 
he is placed under a rigidly restraining discipline, to meet his vase in 
the first respect, and under correction and penal dispensation with rela- 
tion to the latter. On the other hand, as he is an object beloved by the 
God he has offended; a being for whose pardon and recovery Divine 
mercy has made provision ; moral ends are connected with these severi- 
ties, and nature and providence as well as revelation are crowned with 
instances of Divine benevolence to the sinning race. The proof of 
these different relations of man to God, surrounds us in that admixture of 
good and evil, of indulgence and restraint, of felicity and misery, to which 
he is so manifestly subject. Life is felt in all ordinary circumstances 
to be a blessing; but it is short and uncertain, subject to diseases and 
accidents. Many enjoyments iall to the lot of men; yet with the majo- 
rity they are attained by means of great and exhausting labours of the 
body or of the mind, through which the risks to health and life are 
greatly multiplied; or they are accompanied with so many disappoint- 
‘ments, fears, and cares, that their number and their quality are greatly 
lessened. The globe itself, the residence of man, and upon whose fer- 
tility, seasons, exterior surface, and interior stratification so much of the 
external felicity of man depends. bears marks of a mingled kind of just 
and merciful government suited to such a being as man in the state de- 
scribed in the Scriptures, and to none else. It cannot be supposed, that 
if inhabited by a race of beings perfectly holy and in the full enjoyment 
of the Divine favour. this earth would be subject to destructive earth. 
quakes, volcanoes, and inundations ; to blights and dearths, the harbip- 


om 
Fiks 1.5 THEOLOGICAL LNS‘1ive LES. 209 | 


gers of famine ; to those changes in the atmosphere which induce wide. 
wasting epidemic disorders; to that general sterility of soil which ren. 
ders labour necessary to such a degree, as fully to occupy the time of 
the majority of mankind, prevent them from engaging in pursuits worthy 
an intellectual nature, and wear down their spirits ; nor that the metals so 
necessary for man in civilized life, and, in many countries, the materia] 
of the fire by which cold must be repelled, food prepared, and the most 
important arts executed, should be hidden deep in the bowels of the 
earth, so that a great body of men rust be doomed to the dangerous ana 
humbling labour of raising them! ‘These and many other instances (1) 
show a course of discipline very incongruous with the most enlightened 
views of the Divine character, if man be considered as an innocent be- 
ing. On the contrary, that he is under an unmixed penal administra- 
tion, is contradicted by the facts, that the earth yet yields her increase 
ordinarily to industry ; that the destructive convulsions of nature are 
dut occasional ; and that, generally, the health of-the human rage pre- 
dominatrs over sickness, and their animal enjoyments over positive 
misery. To those diverse relations of man to God, as stated in the Bible, 
the contrarieties of nature and providence bear an exact adaptation. 
Assume man to be any thing else than what is represented in Scripture, 
they would be discordant and inexplicable ; in this view they harmonize. 
Man is neither innocent nor finally condemned—he is fallen and guilty, 
but not excluded from the compassion and care and benignity of his 
God. 

The next leading doctrine of Christianity is the restoration of man to 
the Divine favour, through the merits of THE VICARIOUS AND SACRIFICIAI. 
DEATH oF Curist, the incarnate Son of God. To this many objec- 
tions have been offered; but, on the other hand, many important rea- 
sons for such a procedure have been overlooked. The rational evidence 
of this doctrine, we grant, is partial and limited; but it will be recol- 
lected, that it has been already proved, that the authority and truth of a 
doctrine are not thereby affected. It is indeed not unreasonable to sup- 
pose, that the evidence of the fitness and necessity of such a doctrine 
should be to us obscure. “The reason of the thing,” says Bishop But- 
ler, “and the whole analogy of nature should teach us, not to expect tu 
hare the like information concerning the Divine conduct, as concerning 
our own duty.” On whatever terms God had been pleased to offer for- 
giveness to his creatures, if ary other had been morally possible, it is 
not to be supposed that all the reasons of his conduct, which must of 
course respect the very principles of his government in general, extend- 
ing not only to man, but to other beings, could have been explained, 


(1) See the argument largely and ingeniously exhibited in Grssorne’s Testi, 
mony of Nat. Theol. &c. 
Von. I. 14 


* 
210 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


and certain it is, that those to whom the benefit was offered wuuld have 
had no right to require it, . 

The Christian doctrine of atonement as a necessary merciful interpo- 
sition, is grounded upon the liability of man to punishment in another 
life, for sins committed against the law of God in this ; and against this 
view of the future prospects of mankind there can lie no objection of 
weight. Men are capable of committing sin, and sin is productive of 
misery and disorder. ‘These positions cannot be denied. ‘That to vio- 
late the laws of God and to despise his authority are not light crimes, 
is clear from considering them in their general effect upon society, and 
upon the world. Remove from the human race all the effects produced 
by vice, direct and indirect; all the inward and outward miseries and 
calamities which are entirely evitable by mankind, and which they wil- 
fully bring upon themselves and others, and scarcely a sigh would be 
heaved, or a groan heard, except those extorted by natural evils, (small 
comparatively in number) throughout the whole earth. The great sum 
of human misery is the effect of actual offence ; and as it is a principle 
in the wisest and most perfect human legislation to estimate the guilt 
of individual acts by their general tendency, and to proportion the pun- 
ishment to them under that consideration, the same reason of the case 
is in favour of this principle, as found in Scripture ; and thus consider- 
ed, the demerit of the sins of an individual against God becomes incal.- 
culable. Nor is there any foundation to suppose, that the punishment 
assigned to sin by the judicial appointment of the Supreme Governor, 
is confined to the present life; for before we can determine that, we 
must be able to estimate the demerit of an act of wilful transgression in 
its principle, habits, and influence, which, as parties implicated, we are 
not in a state of feeling or judgment to attempt, were the subject more 
within our grasp. But the obvious reason of the case is in favour of 
the doctrine of future punishment ; for not only is there an unequal ad- 
ministration of punishments in the present life, so that many eminent 
offenders pass through the present state without any visible manifesta- 
tion of the Divine displeasure against their conduct, but there are strong 
and convincing proofs that we are placed in a state of trial, which con- 
tinues throughout life, and the result of which can only be known, and 
consequently we ourselves can only become subjects of final reward or 
punishment, after existence in this world terminates. From the circum. 
stances we have just enumerated to indicate the kind of government 
which is exercised over the human race, we must conclude, that, allow. 
ing the Supreme Governor to be wise and just, benevolent and holy, 
men are neither treated as innocent nor as incorrigibly corrupt. Now, 
what reason can possibly be given for this mixed kind of administration, 
but that the moral improvement of man is the object intended by it? 
The severity discountenances and testrains vice the annexation of 


FIRST.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 21) 


ward felicity in all cases, (and outward in all those instances in which 
the result depends upon the conduct of the individual,) to holy habits 
and acts, recommends and sanctions them, and allures to the use of 
those means which God has provided for enabling us to form and 
practise them. No other final causes, it would appear, can be assigned 
for the peculiar manner in which we are governed in the present life ; 
and if the deterring and correcting severity on the one hand, and the 
alluring and instructive kindness on the other, which mark the Divine 
ndministration, continue throughout life ; if, in every period of his life 
here, man is capable, by the use of the prescribed means, of forming new 
habits and renouncing old ones, and thus of accomplishing the purposes 
of the moral discipline under which he is placed, then is he in a state 
of trial throughout life, and if so, he is accountable for the whole course 
of his life ; and his ultimate reward or punishment must be in a state 
subsequent to the present. 

It is also the doctrine of Scripture, that this future punishment of the 
incorrigible shall be final and unlimited ; another consideration of great 
importance in considering the doctrine of atonement. ‘This is a monitory 
doctrine which a revelation only could unfold; but being made, it has 
no inconsiderable degree of rational evidence. It supposes, it is true, 
that no future trial shall be allowed to man, the present having been 
neglected and abused ; and to this there is much analogy in the constant 
procedures of the Divine government in the present life. When many 
checks and admonitions from the instructions of the wise. and -he exam. 
ples of the froward, have been disregarded, poverty and s.ckness, infamy 
and death, ensue, in a thousand cases which the observation of every 
man will furnish ; the trial of an individual, which is to issue in his pre- 
sent happiness or misery, is terminated; and so far from its being 
renewed frequently, in the hope of his finally profiting by a bitter expe- 
rience, advantages, and opportunities, once thrown away, can never be 
recalled. There is nothing therefore contrary to the obvious principles 
of the Divine government as manifested in this life, in the doctrine which 
confines the space of man’s highest and most solemn probation within 
certain limits, and beyond them cutting off all his hope. But let this 
subject be considered by the light thrown upon it by the circumstance, 
that the nature of man is immortal. With those who deny this to be the 
prerogative of the thinking principle in man, it would be trifling to hold 
this argument ; but with those who do not, the consideration of the sub. 
ject under this view is important. 

The existence of man is never to cease. It follows then from this, 
that either the future trials to be allowed to those who in the present 
hfe have been incorrigible, are to be limited in number, or. should they. 
successively fail, are to be repeated for ever. If the latter, there can 
>: nc ultimate judgment, no punishment or reward ; and consequently 


212 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


the Divine government as implying these, (and this we know it dces, 
from what takes place in thé present life,) must be annihilated. If this 
cannot be maintained, is there sufficient reason to conclude, that all to 
whom trial after trial is supposed to be afforded in new and varied cir 

cumstances, in order to multiply the probabilities, so to speak, of their 
final recovery from rebellion, will be at length reclaimed? Before this 
can be answered, it must be recollected, that a state of suffering which 
would compel obedience, if we should suppose mere suffering capable 
of producing this effect, or an exertion of influence upon the understand- 
ing and will which shall necessitate a definite choice, is neither of them 
to be assumed as entering into the circumstances of any new state of 
trial. Every such future trial, to be probationary at all, that is, in order 
to bring out the existence of a new moral principle, and by voluntary 
acts to prove it, must substantially be like the present, though its circum- 
stances may vary. Vice must have its allurements; virtue must rise 
from self denial, and be led into the arena to struggle with difficulty ; 
many present interests and pleasures must be seen in connection with 
vice ; the rewards of obedience must, as now, be not only more refined 
than mere sense can be gratified with, but also distant: the mind must 
be capable of error in its moral estimate of things, through the influence 
of the senses and passions ; and so circumstanced, that those erroneous 
views shall only be prevented or corrected by watchfulness, and a dili- 
gent application to meditation, prayer, and the use of those means of 
information on moral subjects which almghty God may have put within 
their reach. We have no right in this argument to imagine to our- 
selves.a future condition where the influence of every circumstance will 
be directed to render vice most difficult to commit, and virtue most 
difficult to avoid; for this would not be a state of trial: and if in this’ 
present life, men have obstinately resisted all admonitions from heaven ; 
obdurated themselves against all the affecting displays of the Divine kind- 
ness, and the deterring manifestations of the Divine majesty ; it is most 
reasonable to conclude, that a part of them at least would abuse suc- 
cessive trials, and frustrate their intention, by attachment to present and 
sensual gratification. What then is to become of them? If we adm». 
a moral government of rational creatures at all, their probation canna 
be eternal, for that leads to no result; if probation be appointed, if 
imphes acceuntability, a judicial decision, and that judicial decision, m1 
the case of the incorrigible, punishment. Whenever then the trial, ot 
the series of trials, terminates as to these immortal beings, the subse. 
quent punishment, of what kind soever it may be, must be eternal. This 
doetrine of Scripture rests therefore upon others, of which the rational 
evidence is abundant and convincing ;—that almighty God exercises a 
moral government over his creatures ; that the present life is a state of 
moral discipline and trial; and that man is immortal. If these are 


FIRST. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 213 


allowed, the eternal duration of future punishments, as to the obstinately 
wicked, must follow ; and its accordance with the principles just men. 
tioned, is its rational evidence. 

That atonement for the sins of men which was made by the death of 
Christ, is represented in the Christian system as the means by which 
mankind may be delivered from this awful catastrophe—from judicial 
inflictions of the displeasure of a Governor, whose authority has been 
contemned, and whose will has been resisted, which shall know no miti 
gation in their degree, nor bound to their duration; and if an end, 
supremely great and benevolent, can commend any procedure to us, the 
Scriptural doctrine of atonement commends this kind of appeal to our 
attention. This end it professes to accomplish, by means which, with 
respect to the Supreme Governor himself, preserve his character from 
mistake, and maintain the authority of his government ; and with respect 
to man, give him the strongest possible reason for hope, and render 
more favourable the circumstances of his earthly probation. These are 
considerations which so manifestly show, from its own internal constitu- 
tion, the superlative importance and excellence of Christianity, that it 
would be exceedingly criminal to overlook them. 

How sin may be forgiven without leading to such misconceptions of 
the Divine character as would encourage disobedience, and thereby 
weaken the influence of the Divine government, must be considered as 
a problem of very difficult solution. A government which admitted no 
forgiveness, would sink the guilty to despair ; a government which never 
punishes offence, is a contradiction—it cannot exist. Not to punish, is 
to dissolve authority ; to punish without mercy, is to destroy, and, where 
all are guilty, to make the destruction universal. That we cannot sin 
with impunity, is a matter determined: The Ruler of the world is not 
careless of the conduct of his creatures; for that penal consequences 
are attached to offence, is not a subject of argument, but is made evident 
from daily observation of the events and circumstances of the present 
life. It is a principle, therefore, already laid down, that the authority 
of God must be preserved; and it ought to be observed, that in that 
kind of administration which restrains evil by penalty, and encourages 
obedience by favour and hope, we and all moral creatures are the inte- 
rested parties, and not the Divine Governor himself, whom, because of 
bis independent and efficient nature, our transgressions cannot injure. 
The reasons therefore which compel him to maintain his authority, do 
not terminate in himself. If he becomes a party against offenders, it is 
for our sake, and for the sake of the moral order of the universe, to 
wh ch sin, if encouraged by a negligent administration, and by entire or 
frequent impunity, would be the source of endless disorder and misery : 
and if the granting of pardon to offence be strongly and even severely 
guarded, we are to refer it to the moral necessity of the case as arising 


2 


P| THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


out of the general welfare of accountable creatures, liable to the deep 
evil of sin, and not to any reluctance onthe part of our Maker to for- 
give, much less to any thing vindictive in his nature,—charges which 
have been most inconsiderately and unfairly brought against the Chris. 
tian doctrine of Christ’s vicarious sufferings. If it then be true, that the 
telief of offending man from future punishment, and his restoration to 
the Divine favour, ought for the interests of mankind themselves, and 
for the instruction and caution of other beings, to be so bestowed, that 
uo license shall be given to offence ; that God himself, while he mani- 
fests his compassion, should not appear less just, less holy, than the 
maintenance of an efficient and even awful authority demands ; that his 
comands shall be felt to be as compelling, and that disobedience shall 
as truly, though not so unconditionally, subject us to the deserved 
penalty, as though no hope of forgiveness had been exhibited, we ask, 
on what scheme, save that which is developed in the New Testament, 
these necessary conditions are provided for? Necessary they are, 
unless we contend for a license and an impunity which shall annul the 
efficient control of the universe, a point which no reasonable man will 
contend for; and if not, then he must allow an internal evidence of the 
truth of the doctrine of Scripture, which makes the offer of pardon con- 
sequent only upon the securities we have before mentioned. If it be 
said, that sin may be pardoned in the exercise of the Divine preroga- 
tive, the reply is, that if this prerogative were exercised toward a part of 
mankind only, the passing by of the others would be with difficulty 
reconciled to the Divine character; and if the benefit were extended 
to all, government would be at an end. This scheme of bringing met 
within the exercise of mercy, does not therefore meet the obvious diffi 
culty of the case; nor is it improved by confining the act of grace only 
to repentant crimimals. For in the immediate view of danger, what 
offender, surrounded with the wreck of former enjoyments, feeling the 
vanity of guilty pleasures, now past for ever, and beholding the approach 
of the delayed, but threatened, penal visitation, but would repent? Were 
this principle to regulate human governments, every criminal would es. 
cape, and judicial forms would become a subject for ridicule. Nor is 
it the principle which the Divine Being in his conduct to men in the 
present state acts upon, though in this world punishments are not final 
and absolute. Repentance does not restore health injured by intempe- 
rauce, property wasted by profusion, or character once stained by dis. 
honourable practices. If repentance alone can secure pardon, then all 
must be pardoned, and government dissolved, as in the case of forgive- 
ness by the exercise of mere prerogative; if a selection be made, then 
different and discordant principles of government are introduced into the 
Divine administration, which is a derogatory supposition. 

To avoid the force of these obvious difficulties. some have addea 


FIRST. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. ah 


reformation to repentance, and would restrain forgiveness to those only, 
who to their penitence add a course of future obedience to the Divine 
law. In this opinion a concession of importance is made in favour of 
the doctrine of atonement as stated in the Scriptures. For we ask, why 
an act of grace should be thus restricted? Is not the only reason this, 
that every one sees, that to pardon offence either on mere prerogative, 
cr on fue condition of repentance, would annul every penalty, and con- 
sequ 2ntly encourage vice ? The principle assumed then is, that vice ought 
not to be encouraged by an unguarded exercise of the Divine mercy ; 
that the authority of government ought to be upheld; that almighty God 
dught not to appear indifferent to human actions, nor otherwise than as 
a God “hating iniquity,” and “loving righteousness.” Now precisely 
on these principles does the Christian doctrine of atonement rest. It 
carries them higher; it teaches that other means have been adopted 
10 secure the object; but the ends proposed are the same; and thus to 
the principle on which that great doctrine rests, the objector can take 
no exception—that point he has surrendered, and must confine himself 
io a comparison of the efficiency of the respective modes, by which the pur 
poses of moral government may be answered in the exercise of mercy to 
the guilty in his own system, and in that of Christianity. We shall not, 
in order to prove “the wisdom’ as well as the grace of the doctrine of 
the Bible on this subject, press our opponent with the fact, important as 
it is, that in the light vouchsafed unto us into the rules of the government 
of God over men with reference to the present state merely, we see no 
reason to conclude any thing with certainty as to the efficacy of re- 
formation. A change of conduct does not, any more than repentance, 
repair the mischiefs of former misconduct. Even the sobriety of the 
reformed man does not always restore’ health ; and the industrv and 
economy of the formerly negligent and wasteful, repair not the losses of 
extravagance. Nor is it necessary to dwell upon the consideration 
which this theory involves as to all the principles of government established 
among men, which in flagrant cases never suspend punishment in antici- 
pation of a change of conduct ; but which in the infliction of penalty 
look steadily to the. crime actually committed, and to the necessity of 
vindicating the. violated majesty of the laws. The argument might 
indeed be left here; but we go farther and show, that the reformation 
anticipated is ideal, because it is «mpracticable. 

To make this clear it must be recollected, that they who oppose this 
theory of human reconciliation to God, to that of the Scriptures, leave 
out of it not only the vicarious sacrifice of Christ, but other important 
doctrines ; and especially that agency of the Holy Spirit which awakens 
the thoughtless to consideration, and prompts and assists their efforts to 
attain a higher character, and to commence a new course of conduct.” 
Man is therefore left, unassisted, and uninfluenced, to his own endeavours, 


216 THEOLOGICAL INSTITTTES. [PART 


and in the peculiar, unalleviated circumstances of his actual moral state. 
What that state is, we have already seén. It has been argued that no. 
thing can account for the practical corruption of mankind, but a mora] 
taint in our hearts, a propensity of nature to evil and not to good; and that 
every other mode of accounting for the moral phenomena which the histery 
of man and daily experience present, is inconclusive and contradictory. 
How then is this supposed reformation to commence? We do not say, the 
exchange of one vice for another, that specious kind of reformation by 
which many are deceived, for the objector ought to have the credit of 
intending a reformation which implies love to the purity of the Divine com- 
mands ; cordial respect for the authority of our Maker ; and not partial, but 
universal obedience. But ifthe natural, unchecked disposition of the mind 
is to evil, and supernatural assistance be disallowed, “who can bring a 
clean thing out of an unclean?” To natural propension, we are also to 
add in this case, as reformation is the matter in question, the power 
of habit, proverbially difficult to break, though man is not in fact in 
the unassisted condition which the error now opposed supposes. The 
whole of this theery assumes human nature to be what it is not; 
and a delusive conclusion must, therefore, necessarily result. If man 
be totally corrupt, the only principles from which reformation can pro 
ceed do not exist in his nature ; and if we allow no more than that the 
propensity to evil in him is stronger than the propensity to good, it is 
absurd to suppose, that ir opposing propensities the weakest should resist 
the most powerful,—that the stream of the rivulet should force its way 
against the tides of the ocean. The reformation, therefore, which is to 
atone for his vices, is impracticable. 

The question proposed abstractedly, How may mercy be extended to 
offending creatures, the subjects of the Divine government, without 
encouraging vice, by lowering the righteous and holy character of God, and 
the authority of his government, in the maintenance of which the whole uni- 
verse of beings are interested ? is therefore at once one of the most import- 
ant and one of the most difficult which can employ the human mind. None 
of the theories which have been opposed to Christianity, afford a satisfac- 
tory solution of the problem. They assume principles either destructive 
to moral government, or which cannot, in the circumstances of man, be 
acted upon. ‘The only answer is found in the Holy Scriptures. They 
alone show, and indeed they alone profess to show, how God may be 
just, and yet the justifier of the ungodly. Other schemes show how he 
may be merciful; but the difficulty does not lie there. This meets it, 
by declaring “the righteousness of God,” at the same time that it pro- 
claims his mercy. The voluntary sufferings of an incarnate, Divine 
person, “< for us,” in our room and stead, magnify the justice of God ; 
display his hatréd to sin ; proclaim “the exceeding sinfulness” of trans. 
gression, by the deep and painful sufferings of the substitute. warn the 


FIRST. |] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 217 


persevering offender of the terribleness as well as the certainty of his 
nunishment ; and open the gates of salvation to every penitent. It is a 
dart of the same Divine plan to engage the influence of the Holy Spirit, 
o awaken that penitence, and to lead the wandering soul back to him- 
self; to renew the fallen nature of man in righteousness, at the moment 
he is justified through faith, and to place him in circumstances in which 
he may henceforth “ walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.” All 
the ends of government are here answered. No license is given to offence ; 
the moral law is unrepealed; the day of judgment is still appointed ; 
future and eternal punishments still display their awful sanctions ; a new 
and singular display of the awful purity of the Divine character ig 
afforded ; yet pardon is offered to all who seek it; and the whole world 
may be saved ! 

With such evidence of suitableness to the case of mankind; under 
such lofty views of connection with the principles and ends of moral 
government, does the doctrine of THE aToNEMENT present itself. But 
other important considerations are not wanting, to mark the united wis- 
dom and goodness of that method of extending mercy to the guilty, which 
Christianity teaches us to have been actually and exclusively adopted. 
It is rendered indeed “ worthy of all acceptation,” by the circumstance 
of its meeting the difficulties we have just dwelt upon,—difficulties which 
could not otherwise have failed to make a gloomy impression upon every 
offender awakened to a sense of his spiritual danger ; but it must be 
very inattentively considered, if it does not farther commend itself to us, 
by not only removing the apprehensions we might feel as to the justice 
of the Divine Lawgiver, but as exalting him in our esteem as “ the right- 
eous Lord, who loveth righteousness,” who surrendered his beloved Son to 
suffering and death, that the influence of moral goodness might not be 
weakened in the hearts of his creatures—as a God of love, affording 
in this instance a view of the tenderness and benignity of his nature 
infinitely more impressive and affecting than any abstract description 
could convey, or than any act of creating and providential power and 
grace could furnish, and therefore most suitable to subdue that enmity 
which had unnaturally grown up in the hearts of his creatures, and which, 
when corrupt, they so easily transfer from a law which restrains their 
inclmation to the Lawgiver himself. If it be important to us to know 
the extent and reality of our danger, by the death of Christ it is displaved 
not in description, but in the most impressive action; if it be important 
that we should have assurance of the Divine placability toward us, it 
here received a demonstration incapable of greater certainty : if gratitude 
is the most powerful motive of future obedience, and one which renders 
command on the one part, and active service on the other, “ not grievous 
but joyous,” the recollection of such obligations as the “ love of Christ 
nas laid us under, is a perpetual spring to this energetic affection, ard 


218 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


will be the means of raising it to higher and more delightful activity for 
ever. All that can most powerfully illustrate the united tenderness and 
awful majesty of God, and the odiousness of sin; all that can win back 
the heart of man to his Maker and Lord, and render future obedience a 
matter of affection and delight as well as duty ; all that can extinzuisn 
the angry and malignant passions of man to man; all that can inepire 
a mutual benevolence; and dispose to a self-denying charity for the 
benefit of others; all that can arouse by hope or tranquillize by faith, is 
to be found in the vicarious death of Christ, and the principles and pur- 
poses for which it was endured. 

“ Ancient history tells us of a certain king who made a law agaist 
-adultery, in which it was enacted that the offender should be punished 
py the loss of both eyes.. The very first offender was his. own son. 
The case was most distressing ; for the king was an affectionate father, 
as well as a just magistrate. After much deliberation and inward struggle, 
he finally commanded one of his own eyes to be pulled out and one of 
his son’s. It is easier to conceive than to describe what must have been 
the feelings of the son in these most affecting circumstances. His 
offence would appear to him in a new light; it would appear to him, not 
simply as connected with painful consequences to himself, but as the 
cause of a father’s sufferings, and as an injury to a father’s love. If 
the king had passed over the law altogether, in his son’s favour, he would 
have exhibited no regard for justice, and he would have given a very 
inferior proof of affection. 

“Tf we suppose that the happiness of the young man’s life depended 
on the eradication of this criminal propensity, it is not easy to imagine 
how the king could more wisely or more effectually have promoted 
this benevolent object. ‘The action was not simply a correct representa- 
tion of the king’s character,—it also contained in itself an appeal most 
correctly adapted to the feelings of the criminal. It justified the king 
in the exercise of clemency ; it tranquillized the son’s mind, as being a 
pledge of the reality and sincerity of his father’s gracious purposes toward 
him ; and it identified the object of his esteem with the object of his 
gratitude. Mere gratitude, unattracted by an object of moral worth, 
could never have stamped an impression of moral worth on his cha. 
racter ; which was his father’s ultimate design. We might suppose the 
existence of this same character without its producing such an action ; 
we might suppose a conflict of contending feelings to be carried on in 
the mind without evidencing, in the conduct flowing from it, the full 
vehemence of the conflict, or defining the adjustment of the conten ling 
feelings ; but we cannot suppose any mode of conduct so admirably fitted 
to impress the stamp of the father’s character on the mind of the son, or 
to associate the love of right and the abhorrence of wrong with the most 
powerful instincts of the heart. The old man not only wished te act in 


FIRST. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 219 


yertect consistency with his own views of duty, but also to produce a 
salutary effect on the mind of his son; and it is the full and effectual 
inion of these two objects which forms the most beautiful and striking 
part of this remarkable history. 

«There is a singular resemblance between this moral exhibition, and 
the communication which God has been pleased to make of himself in 
the Gospe!. We cannot but love and admire the character of this excellent 
prince, although we ourselves have no direct interest in it; and shall 
we refuse our love and admiration to the King and Father of the human 
race, who, with a kindness and condescension unutterable, has, in call- 
ing his wandering children to return to duty and to happiness, presented 
to each of us a like aspect of tenderness and purity, and made use of 
an argument which makes the most direct and irresistible appeal to the 
most familiar, and at the same time the most powerful principles in the 
heart of man ? 

“A pardon without a sacrifice, could have made but a weak and ob- 
scure appeal to the understanding or the heart. It could not have 
demonstrated the evil of sin; it could not have demonstrated the gra- 
ciousness of God ; and therefore it could not have led man either to hate 
sin or to love God. If the punishment as well as the criminality of sin 
consists in an opposition to the character of God, the fullest pardon must 
be perfectly useless, while this opposition remains in the heart; and the 
substantial usefulness of the pardon will depend upon its being con- 
nected with such circumstances as may have a natural and powerful 
tendency to remove this opposition, and create a resemblance. The 
pardon of the Gospel is connected with such circumstances; for the 
sacrifice of Christ has associated sin with the blood of a benefactor, as 
well as with our own personal sufferings,—and obedience with the dying 
entreaty of a friend breathing out a tortured life for us, as well as with 
our own unending glory in his blessed society. This act, like that in 
the preceding illustration, justifies God as a lawgiver in dispensing mercy 
to the guilty; it gives a pledge of the sincerity and reality of that 
mercy; and, by associating principle with mercy, it identifies the object 
of gratitude with the objcct of esteem, in the heart of the sinner.’ (2) 

Inseparably connected with the great doctrine of atonement, and 

(2) ** Remarks on the Internal Evidence of the Truth of Revealed Religion , 
by Tuomas Erskine, Esq.”-—This popular and interesting volume contains many 
very striking, just, and eloquent remarks in illustration of the internal evidence 
vf several doctrines of the New Testament, and especially of that of the atone. 
ment It is to be regretted, however, that it sets out from a false principle, and 
builds so much truth upon the sand. ‘‘ The sense of moral obligation is ihe 
standard to which reason instructs man to adjust his system of natural religion,” 
and this is ‘‘the test by which he is to try all pretensions to religion” The 
principle of the book therefore is to show the excellence of Christianity from its 
embodying the abstract principles of natural religion in intelligible and palpulile 
action—a gratuitous and unsubdstantial foundation. 


chal THEOLOGICAL INSTITLTES. [PART 


adapted to the new circumstances of trial in which the human ace was 
placed in cuusequence of the lapse of our first parents, is the doctrine — 
of the influence of the Holy Spirit; and this, though supposed by many 
to be farthest removed from rational evidence, can neither be opposed by 
any satisfactory argument, nor is without an obvious reasonableness. 

The Scriptures represent man in the present state as subject not only 
to various sensible excitements to transgression; and as influenced to 
resist temptation by the knowledge of the law of God and its sanctions, 
by his own sense of right and duty, and by the examples of the evils of 
offence which surround him; but also as solicited to obedience by the 
influence of the Holy Spirit, and to persevering rebellion by the seduc- 
tions of evil spirits. | 

This is the doctrine of revelation, and if the evidences of that reve- 
lation can be disproved, it may be rejected ; if not, it must be admitted, 
whether any argumentative proof can be offered in its favour or not. 
That it is not unreasonable, may be first established. 

That God, who made us, and who is a pure Spirit, cannot have im- 
mediate access to our thoughts, our affections, and our will, it would 
certainly be much more unreasonable to deny than to admit; and if the 
great and universal Spirit possesses this power, every physical objec- 
tion at least to the doctrine in question is removed, and finite unbodied 
spirits may have the same kind of access to the mind of man, though 
not in so perfect and intimate a degree. Before any natural impossibi- 
lity can be urged against this intercourse of spirit with spirit, we must 
know what no philosopher, however deep his researches into the causes 
of the phenomena of the mind, has ever professed to know—the laws 
of perception, memory, and association. We can suggest thoughts and 
reasons to each other, ard thus mutually influence our wills and affec- 
tions, We employ for this purpose the medza of signs and words ; but 
to contend, that these are the only media through which thought can be 
conveyed to thought, or that spiritual beings cannot produce the same 
effects tmmediately, is to found an objection wholly upon our ignorance. 
All the reason which the case, considered in ttsvif, affords, is certainly 
in favour of this opinion. We have access to each other’s minds; we 
can suggest thoughts, raise affections, influence the wills of others; and 
analogy heres favours the conclusion, that, though by different and 
latent means, unbodied spirits have the same access to each other, and 
to us. 

If no plrysical impossibility lies against this representation of the cir- 
cumstances of our probation, no moral reason certainly can be wed 
against the principle itself, which makes us liable to the contrary solicit- 
ations of other beings. That God our heavenly Father should be 
solicitous for our welfare, is surely to be admitted; and that there may 
be invisible beings who are anxious, from various motives, some of 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 221 


which may be conceived, and others are unknown, to entice us to evil, is 
made probable by this, that among men, every vicious character seeks 
a fellowship in his vices, and employs various arts of seduction, even 
when he has no interest in success, that he may not be left to sin alone. 
In point of fact, we see this principle of moral trial in constant opera‘ ion 
with respect to our feliow creatures. Who is not counselled, and warned, 
uid entreated by the good? Who is not invited to offence by the 
wicked? What are all the instructive, enlightening, and influential in- 
stitutions which good and benevolent men establish and conduct, but 
means by which others may be drawn and influenced to what is right ? 
and what are all the establishments and devices to multiply the gratifi- 
cations and pleasures of mankind, but means employed by others to 
encourage religious trifling, and indifference to things devout and spi- 
ritual, and often to seduce to vice in its grossest forms? The principle 
is therefore in manifest operation, and he who would except to this doc- 
trine of Scripture, must also except to the Divine government, as it is 
manifested in the facts of experience, and which clearly makes it a cir- 
cumstance of our probation in this world, that our opinions, affections, 
and wills should be subject to the influence of others, both for good and evil. 

By reference to this fact, we may also show the futility of the objec- 
tion to the doctrine of supernatural influence, which is drawn from the 
free agency of man. The Scriptures do not teach that supernatural 
influence, either good or bad, destroys our freedom and accountability. 
How then, it is asked, is the one to be reconciled with the other? 
The answer is, that we are sure they are not incompatible, because, 
though we may be strongly influenced and solicited to good or evil con- 
duct by virtuous or vicious persons; though they may enforce their 
respective wishes by arguments, or persuasions, or hopes, or fears; 
though they may carefiuly lead us into circumstances which may be 
most calculated to undermine or to corroborate virtuous resolutions ; we 
are yet conscious that we are at liberty either to yield or to resist ; and 
on this consciousness, equally common to all, is founded that common 
judgment of the conduct of those, who, though carefully well advised, or 
assiduously seduced, are always treated as free agents in public opinion, 
and praised or censured accordingly. ‘The case is the same where the 
influence is supernatural, only the manner in which it is applied is dif. 
ferent. In one it operates upon the springs which most powerfully 
move the will and affections from without, in the other it is more imme- 
diately from within; but in neither case is it to be supposed that any 
other beings can will or choose for us. The modus operandi in botn 
cases may be inexplicable ; but while the power ot influencing our choice 
may belong to others, the power of choosing is exclusively and neces. 


> 
2 


sarily our own. 
Since therefore no reason physical or moral can be urged against the 


222 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. IPAR? 


doctrine of Divine influence ; since the principle on which it is founded, 
as a circumstance in our trial on earth, is found to accord entirely with 
the actual arrangements of the Divine government in other cases, every 
thing is removed which might obstruct our view of the excellence of 
this encouraging tenet of Divine revelation. The moral helplessness 
of man has been universally felt, and universally acknowledged. ‘To 
see the good and to follow the evil, has been the complaint of all; and 
precisely to such a state is the doctrine of Divine influence adapted. 
As the atonement of Christ stoops to the judicial destitution of man, the 
promise of the Holy Spirit meets the case of his moral destitution. One 
finds hin’ without any means of satisfying the claims of justice, so as to 
exempt him from punishment; the other, without the inclination or the 
strength to avail himself even of proclaimed clemency, and offered par- 
don, and becomes the means of awakening his judgment, and exciting, 
and assisting, and crowning his efforts to obtuin that boon, and its conse- 
quent blessings. The one relieves him from the penalty, the other from 
the disease of sin; the former restores to man the favour of God, the 
other renews him in his image. 

‘lo this eminent adaptation of the doctrine to the condition of man, 
we may add the affecting view which it unfolds of the Divine character. 
That tenderness and compassion of God to his offending creatufes ; that 
reluctance that they should perish ; that Divine and sympathizing anx- 
lety, So to speak, to accomplish their salvation, which were displayed 
by “the cross of Christ,” are here in continued and active manifesta- 
tion. A Divine Agent is seen “seeking,” in order that he may save, 
“that which is lost ;” following the “lost sheep into the wilderness,” that 
he may “ bring it home rejoicing ;” delighting to testify of Christ, be- 
cause of the salvation he has procured ; to accompany with his influence 

written revelation, because that alone contains “‘ words by which men 
may le saved ;” atfording speciai assistance to ministers, because they 
are the messengers of God proclaiming peace ; and, in a word, knock. 
ing at the door of human hearts ; arousing the conscience ; calling forth 
spiritual desires ; opening the eyes of the mind more clearly to discern 
the meaning and application of the revealed word; and mollifying the 
heart to receive its effectual impression :—doing this too without respect 
of persons, and making it his special office and work to convince the 
mistaken ; to awaken the indifferent ; to comfort the penitent and hum- 
dle ; to plant and foster and bring to maturity in the hearts of the obe- 
dient every grace and virtue. ‘These are views of God which we could 
not have had but for this doctrine ; and the obvious tendency of them is, 
to fill the heart with gratitude for a condescension so wonderful and a 
solicitude so tender; to impress us with a deep conviction of the value 
of renewed habits, since God himself stoops to werk tiem in us; and to 
admonish us of th» infinite importance of a personal experience of the 


FIRST.] TIFEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, 223 


benefits of Christ’s death, since the means of our pardon and sanctifi 
cation unapplied can avail us nothing. 

We may add, (and it is no feeble argument in favour of the excellence 
of this branch of Christian doctrine,) that we are thereby encouraged to 
aspire after a loftier character of moral purity, and a more perfect state 
of virtue; as well as to engage in more difficult duties. Were we left 
wholly to our own resources, we should despair; and perhaps it is 
exactly in proportion to the degree in which this promise of the Holy 
Spirit is apprehended by those who truly receive Christianity, that they 
advance the standard of possible moral attainment. That God should 
‘work in us to will and to do of his good pleasure,” is a reason why we 
should “ work out our own salvation with fear and trembling ;” for as our 
freedom is not destroyed, as even tne Spirit may be “grieved” and 
“quenched,” our fall would be unspeakably aggravated by our advan- 
tages. But the operation of God within us is also a motive to the work- 
ing our salvation “ ouf,”—to the perfecting of our sanctification even to 
eternal life. None can despair of conquering any evil habit, who steadily 

look to this great doctrine, and cordially embrace it; none can despair 
of being fully renewed again m the image of God, when they know that 
it is one of the offices of the Holy Spirit to effect this renovation ; and 
none who habitually rest upon the promise of God for all that assistance 
which the written word warrants them to expect in difficult and painful 
duties, and in those generous enterprises for the benefit of others which 
a hallowed zeal may lead them to engage in, will be discouraged in 
either. ‘“ In the name of God,” such persons have in all ages “ lifted up 
their banners,” and have thus been elevated into a decision, a boldness, 
an enterprise, a perseverance, which no other consideration or trust 
could inspire. Such are the practical effects of this doctrine. 
prompts to attainments in inward sanctity and outward virtue, which 
would have been chimerical to consider possible, but for the aid of a 
Divine influence ; and it leads to exertion for the benefit of others, the 
success of which would otherwise be too doubiful to encourage the 
undertaking. 

It would be easy to adduce many other doctrines of our religion, 
which, from their cbvious excellency and correspondence with the 
experience and circumstances of mankind, furnish much interesting 
internal evidence in favour of its Divinity ; but as this would greatly 
»xceed the limits of a chapter, and as those doctrines have been consi. 
dered against which the most strenuous objections from pretended 
rational principles have been urged; the moral state and condition of 
man; the atonement made by the death of Christ for the sins of the 
world ; and the influences of the Holy Spirit,—it may have been sufh- 
cient for the argument to have shown that even such doctrines are. 
accompanied with important and interesting reasons ; and that they 


224 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, [PART 


powerfully commend Christianity to universal acceptance. What has 
been said is to be considered only as a specimen of ‘le rational proof 
which accompanies many of the doctrines of revelation, and which a 
considerate mind may with ease enlarge by numerous other instances 
drawn from its precepts, its promises, and those future and ennobling 
hopes which it sets before us. The wonderful agreement in doctrine 
among the writers of the numerous books of which the Bible is com- 
posed, who lived in ages very distant from each other, and wrote under 
circumstances as varied as can well be conceived, may properly close 
this part of the internal evidence. “In all the bearings, parts, and 
designs of the book of God, we shall find a most striking harmony, 
fitness, and adaptation of its component parts to one beautiful, stupen- 
dous, and united whole; and that all its parts unite and terminate in a 
most magnificent exhibition of the glory of God, the lustre of his attri- 
butes, the strict and true perfection of his moral government, the mag- 
nitude and extent of his grace and love, especially as manifested in the 
salvation and happiness of man, in his recovery from moral pravity, 
and restoration to a capacity of acquiring happiness eternal.” (LiLoyp’s 
Hore Theologice.) This argument is so justly and forcibly expressed 
in the following quotation, as to need no farther elucidation :— 

«The sacred volume is composed by a vast variety of writers, men of 
every different rank and condition, of every diversity of character and 
turn of mind; the monarch and the plebeian, the illiterate and learned, 
the foremost in talent and the moderately gifted in natural advantages, 
the historian and the legislator, the orator and the poet,—each has his 
peculiar province ; ‘some prophets, some apostles, some evangelists,’ 
living in ages remote from each other, under different modes of civil 
government, under different dispensations of the Divine economy, filling 
a period of time which reached from the first dawn of heavenly light to 
its meridian radiance. ‘The Old Testament and the New, the law and 
the Gospel ; the prophets predicting events, and the evangelists record. 
ing them; the doctrinal yet didactic epistolary writers, and he who 
closed the sacred canon in the Apocalyptic vision ;—all these furnished 
their respective portions, and yet all tally with a dove-tailed correspond. 
ence; all the different materials are joined with a completeness the 
most satisfactory, with an agreement the most incontrovertible. 

«This instance of uniformity without design, of agreement without 
contrivance ; this consistency maintained through a long series of ages, 
without a possibility of the ordinary methods for conducting such a 
plan; these unparalleled congruities, these unexampled coincidences, 
form altogether a species of evidence, of which there is no other 
instance in the history of all the other books in the world. 

« All these variously gifted writers here enumerated, concur in this 
grand peculiarity —that all have the same end in view, all are pointing 


E 
FIRST.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, 225 


to the same object ; all, without any projected collusion, are advancing 
the same scheme; each brings in his several contingent without any 
apparent consideration how it may unite with the portions brought by 
other contributors, without any spirit of accommodation, without any 
visible intention to make out a case, without indeed any actual resem. 
plance, more than that every separate portion being derived from the 
same spring, each must be governed by one common principle, and that 
principle being truth itself, must naturally and consentaneously produce 
assimilation, conformity, agreement. What can we conclude from all 
tris, but what is indeed the inevitable conclusion,—a conclusion which 
forces itself on the mind, and compels the submission of the understand- 
ing ;—that all this, under differences of administration, is the work of 
one and the same great omniscient and eternal Spirit!” (Mrs. More’s 
Character of St. Paul.) 

The second branch of the internal evidence of the Scriptures con. 
sists of their moral tendency ; and here, as in doctrine, the believer may 
take the highest and most commanding ground. 

If, as to the truths revealed in them, the before “unknown God,” 
unknown even to the philosophers of Athens, has been “ declared” unto 
us; if the true moral condition, dangers, and hopes of man have been 
revealed ; if the “kindness and good will of God our Saviour unto man” 
has appeared ; if the true propitiation has been disclosed, and the gates 
of salvation opened; if, through the promised influences of the Holy 
Spirit, the renewal of our natures in the image of God originally borne 
by man, the image of his holiness, is made possible to all who seek it ; 
if we have, in the consentaneous system of doctrine which we find in 
the Scriptures, every moral direction which can safely guide, every 
promise which can convey a blessing suitable to our condition, and 
every hope which can at once support under suffering, and animate us 
.o go through our course of trial, and aspire to the high rewards of 
another life ; the moral influence of such a system is as powerful as its 

revelations & doctrine are lofty and-important. 

One of the most flagrant instances of that malignity of heart with 
which some infidel writers have assailed the Scriptures, and which, 
more than any thing, shows that it is not the want of evidence, but a 
hostility arising from a less creditable source, which leads them, in the 
spirit of enmity and malice, wilfully to libel what they ought to adore,— 
is, that they have boldly asserted the Bible to have an immoral tend- 
ency. For this, the chief proof which they pretend to offer is, that it 
records the failings and the vices of some of the leading characters ir 
the Old and New Testaments. 

The fact is not denied: but they suppress what is atidily true, tnat 
these vices are never mentioned with approbation ; that the characters - 
stained with them are not, in those respects, held up to our imitation: 

Vou. I. 15 


226 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, “PARI 


and that their frailties are recorded for admonition, They dwell upen 
the crimes of David, and sneer at his being called “a man after God's 
own heart: but they suppress the fact, that he was so called long 
before the commission of those crimes; and that he was not at any 
time declared to be acceptable to God with reference to his private 
conduct as a man, but in respect of his public conduct as a king. Nor 
do they state, that these crimes are, in the same Scriptures, represented 
as being tremendously visited by the displeasure of the Almighty, both 
in the life of David, and in the future condition of his family. From 
such objectors the Bible’ can suffer nothing, because the injustice of 
their attacks implies a constrained homage to the force of truth. Even 
this very objection furnishes so strong an argument in favour of the 
sincerity and honesty of the sacred writers, that it confirms their cre- 
dibility in that which unbelievers deny, as well as in those relations 
which they are glad, for a hostile purpose, to admit. Had the Scrip- 
tures. been written by cunning impostors, such acknowledgments of 
crimes and frailties in their most distinguished characters, and in some 
of the writers themselves, would not have been made. 

“The evangelists all agree in this most unequivocal character of 
veracity, that of criminating themselves. ‘They record their own errors 
and offences with the same simplicity with which they relate the 
miracles and sufferings of their Lord. Indeed their dulness, mistakes, 
and failings, are so intimately blended with his history by their continual 
demands upon his patience and forbearance, as to make no inconsider- 
able or unimportant part of it. This fidelity is equally admirable both 
in the composition and in the preservation of the Old Testament, a book 
which every where testifies against those whose history it contains, and 
not seldom against the relators themselves. The author of the Penta- 
teuch proclaims, in the most pointed terms, the ingratitude of those 
chosen people toward God. He prophesies that they will go on filling 
up the measure of their offences, calls heaven and earth to witness 
against them that he has delivered: his own soul, and declares that as 
they have worshipped gods which were no gods, Gop will punish them 
by calling a people who were no people. Yet this book, so disgraceful 
to their national character, this register of their own offences, they 
would rather die than lose. ‘This,’ says the admirable Pascal, ‘is an 
instance of integrity which has no example in the world, no root mw 
nature.” In the Pentateuch and the Gospels, therefore, these parallel, 
these unequalled instances of sincerity, are incontrovertible proofs of 
the truth of both.” (Mrs. Morn’s Character of St. Paul.) 

It is but-just to say, that the malignant absurdity and wickedness of 
charging the Scriptures with an immoral tendency, have not been in- 
curred by all who have even zealously endeavoured to undermine their 
Divine authority. Many of them make important concessions on this 


FIRST.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. Bay 


point. They show in their own characters the effect of their unbelief, 
and probably the chief cause of it:. Blount committed suicide, because 
ne was prevented from an incestuous marriage ; Tyndal was notoriously 
infamous ; Hobbes changed his principles with his interests; Morgan 
continued to profess Christianity while he wrote against it. The moral 
character of Voltaire was mean and detestable ; Bolinbroke was a rake 
and a flagitious politician. Collins and Shaftesbury qualified themsels es 
for civil offices by receiving the sacrament, while they were endeavour- 
ing to prove the religion of which it is a solemn expression of belief, a 
mere imposture ; Hume was revengeful, disgustingly vain, and an advo- 
cate of adultery and self murder; Paine was the slave of low and 
degrading habits; and Rousseau an abandoned sensualist, and guilty of 
the basest actions, which he scruples not to state and palliate. Yet even 
some of these have admitted the superior purity of the morals of the 
Christian revelation. The eloquent eulogium of Rousseau on the Gospel 
and its Author, is well known; it isa singular passage, and shows, that 
-it is the state of the heart, and not the judgment, which leads to the 
rejection of the testimony of God. (3) 


(3) ‘I will confess to you that the majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with 
admiration, as the purity of the Gospel has its influence on my heart. Peruse 
the works of our philosophers, with all their pomp of diction: how mean, how 
contemptible are they, compared with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book 
at once so simple and sublime, should be merely the work of man? Is it pos. 
sible that the sacred personage, whose history it contains, should be himself a 
mere man? Do we find that he assumed the tone of an enthusiast or ambitious 
sectary ? What sweetness, what purity in his manners! What an affecting 
gracefulness in his delivery! What sublimity in his maxims! What profound 
wisdom in his discourses! What presence of mind in his replies! How great 
the command over his passions! Where is the man, where the philosopher, 
who could so live, and so die, without weakness, and without ostentation ? 
When Plato described his imaginary good man with all the shame of guilt, yet 
meriting the highest rewards of virtue, he described exactly the character of 
Jesus Christ: the resembiance was so striking that all the Christian fathers 
perceived it. 

‘‘ What prepossession, what blindness must it be. to compare the son of 
Sophronicus [Socrates] to the Son of Mary! What an infinite disproportion 
is there between them! Socrates dying without pain or ignominy, easily sup- 
ported his character to the last: and if his death, however easy, had not crowned 
his life, it might have been doubted whether Socrates, with all his wisdom, was 
any thing more than a vain sophist. He invented, it is said, the theory of morais, 
thers, however, had before put them in practice ; he had only to say, therefore, 
what they had done, and to reduce their examples to precept. But where coul¢ 
Jesus learn among his competitors, that pure and sublime morality, of which he 
only has given us both precept and example? The death of Socrates, peaceably 
philosophizing with his friends, appears the most agreeable that could be wishec 
for; that of Jesus, expiring in the midst of agonizing pains, abused, insulted, 
and accused by a whole nation, is the most horrible that could be feared 
Socrates, in receiving the cup of poison, blessed the weeping executioner who 


‘ 


228 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


Nor is it surprising that a truth so cbvious should, even from adver. 
saries, extort concession. No where but in the Scriptures have we a 
perfect system of morals; and the deficiencies of pagan morality only 
exalt the purity, the comprehensiveness, the practicability of ours. 
The character of the Being acknowledged as Supreme must always 1m. 
press itself upon moral feeling and practice; the obligation of which 
rests upon his will. We have seen the views eutertained by pagans on 
this all-important point, and their effects. The God of the Buble is 
« holy” without spot ; “just” without intermission or partiality ; “ good,” 
—boundlessly benevolent and beneficent; and his law is the image of 
himself, “ holy, just, and good.” These great moral qualities are not as 
with them, so far as they were apprehended, merely abstract, and there- 
fore comparatively feeble in their influence. In the person of Christ, 
our God incarnate, they are seen exemplified in actzon, displaying them. 
selves amidst human relations, and the actual circumstances of human 
life. With them, the authority of moral rules was either the opinion of 
the wise, or the tradition of the ancient, confirmed it is true, in some. 
degree, by observation and experience; but to us, they are given as 
commands immediately from the supreme Governor, and ratified as Hts 
by the most solemn and explicit attestations. With them, many great 
moral principles, being indistinctly apprehended, were matters of doubt 
and debate ; to us, the explicit manner in which they are given excludes 
both: for it cannot be questioned, whether we are commanded to love 
our neighbour as ourselves ; to do to others as we would they should do 
to us, a precept which comprehends almost all relative morality in one 
plain principle; to forgive our enemies; to love all mankind; to live 
“righteously” and “soberly,” as well as “ godly ;” that magistrates 
must be a terror only to evil doers, and a praise to them that do well ; 
that subjects are to render honour to whom honour, and tribute to whom 
tribute is due; that masters are to be just and merciful, and servants 
faithful and obedient. ‘These and many other familiar precepts are too 
explicit to be mistaken, and too authoritative to be disputed; two of the 
most powerful means of rendering law effectual. Those who never en. 


administered it; but Jesus, in the midst of excruciating tortures, prayed for his 
merciless tormentors. Yes! if the life and death of Socrates were those of a 
sage, the life and death of Jesus were those of a God. Shall we suppose the 
evangelic history a mere fiction? Indeed, my friend, it bears not the marks of 
fiction ; on the contrary, the history of Socrates, which nobody presumes to deubt, 
is not so well attested as that of Jesus Christ. Sucha supposition, in fact, only 
shifts the difficulty, without obviating it; it is more inconceivable, that a num. 
ber of persons should agree to write such a history, than shat one only should 
furnish the subject of it. The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and 
strangers to the morality contained in the Gospel, the marks of whose truth are 


30 striking and inimitable, that the inventor wonld be a more astonishing map 
than the hero” 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 229 


joyed the benefit of revelation, never conceived justly and comprehen. 
sively of that moral state of the heart from which right and beneficent 
conduct alone can flow, and therefore when they speak of the same 
virtues as those enjoined by Christianity, they are to be understood as 
attaching to them a lower idea. In this the infinite superiority of 
Christianity displays itself. The principle of obedience is not only a 
sense of duty to God, and the fear of his displeasure ; but a tender love, 
excited by his infinite compassions to us in the gift of his Son, which 
shrinks from offending. To this influential motive as a reason of 
obedience, is added another, drawn from its end : one not less influential : 
but which heathen moralists never knew,—the testimony that we please 
God, manifested in the acceptance of our prayers, and in spiritual and 
felicitons communion with him. By Christianity, impurity of thought 
and desire is restrained in an equal degree as their overt acts in the lips 
and conduct. Humanity, meekness, gentleness, placability, disinterest- 
edness, and charity, are all as clearly and solemnly enjoined as the 
grosser vices are prohibited; and on the unruly tongue itself is im- 
pressed “the law of kindness.” Nor are the injunctions feeble ; they 
are strictly Law, and not mere advice and recommendations. ‘ Without 
holiness no man shall see the Lord ;” and thus our entrance inte heaven, 
and our escape from perdition, are made to depend upon this preparation 
of mind. To all this is added possibility, nay certainty of attainment, if 
we use the appointed means. A pagan could draw, though not with lines 
so perfect, a beau ideal of virtue, which he never thought attainable ; 
but the “full assurance of hope” is yiven by the religion of Christ to 
all who are seeking the moral renovation of their nature; because “ it 

is God that. worketh in us to will and to do of his good pleasure.” 
When such is the moral tendency of Christianity, how obvious is its 
beneficial tendency both as to the individual and to society! From 
every passion which wastes, and burns, and frets, and enfeebles the 
spirit, the individual is set free, and his inward peace renders his 
obedience cheerful and voluntary ; and we might appeal to infidels them- 
selves, whether, if the moral principles of the Gospel were wrought into 
the hearts, and embodied in the conduct of all men, the world would not 
be happy ;—whether, if governments ruled, and subjects obeyed by the 
laws of Christ ;—whether, if the rules of strict justice which are enjoined 
apon us regulated all the transactions of men, and all that mercy to the 
distressed which we are taught to feel and to practise came into opera- 
tion ;—and whether, if the precepts which delineate and enforce the 
duties of husbands, wives, masters, servants, parents, children, fully and 
generally governed all these relations, a better age than that called 
golden by the poets, would not be realized, and Virgil’s 
Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna, ; 


be far ton weak to express the mighty change? Such is the tendeney 


230 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


of Christianity. On immense numbers of individuals it has superin- 
duced these moral changes; all natidns, where it has been fully and 
faithfully exhibited, bear, amidst their remaining vices, the impress of 
its hallowing and benevolent influence : it is now in active exertion, in 
many of the darkest and worst parts of the earth, to convey the same 
blessings; and he who would arrest its progress, were he able, would 
quench the only hope which remains to our world, and prove himself an 
enemy, not only to himself, but to al] mankind. What then, we ask, 
does all this prove, but that the Scriptures are worthy of God, and pro- 
pose the very ends which rendered a revelation necessary? Of the 
whole system of practical religion which it contains we may say, as of 
that which is embodied in our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, in the words 
of one who, in a course of sermons on that Divine composition, has 
entered most deeply into its spirit, and presented a most instructive 
delineation of the character which it was intended to form: “ Behold 
Christianity in its native form, as delivered by its great Author. See a 
picture of God, as far as he is imitable by man, drawn by God’s own 
hand.—What beauty appears in the whole! How just.a symmetry |! 
What exact proportion in every part! How desirable is the happiness 
here described! How venerable, how lovely is the holiness!” (Was. 
LEY’s Sermons.) “If,” says Bishop Taylor, “ wisdom, and mercy, and 
justice, and simplicity, and holiness, and purity, and meekness, and con- 
tentedness, and charity, be images of God, and rays of Divinity, then 
that doctrine, in which all these shine so gloriously, and.in which 
nothing else is ingredient, must needs be from God. If the holy Jesus 
had come into the world with less splendour of power and mighty 
demonstrations, yet the excellency of what he taught makes him alone 
fit to be tHe Master or THE worp.” (Moral Demonstration of the 
Truth of the Christian Religion.) 

INTERNAL EVIDENCE of the truth of the Scriptures may also be col- 
lected from their style. It is various, and thus accords with the profes. 
sion, that the whole is a collection of books by different individuals ; 
each has his own peculiarity so strongly marked, and so equally sus. 
tained throughout the book or books ascribed to him, as to be a forcible 
proof of genuineness. The style of Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, 
Daniel, the evangelists, and St. Paul, are all strikingly different. The 
xriters of the New Testament employ Hebrew idioms, words, and 
yurases. ‘The Greek in which they wrote, is not classical Greek ; but, 
as it is observed by Bishop Marsh, “is such a dialect as would be used 
by persons educated in a country where Chaldee or Syriac was spoken 
as the vernacular tongue ; but who also acquired a knowledge of Greek 
by frequent intercourse with strangers.” This therefore affords an 
argument from internal evidence, that the books were written by the 
persens whose names they bear and it has been shown bv the same 


FIRS J THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 231 


prelate, that as this particular style was changed after the destruction 
of Jerusalem, the same compound language could not be written in any 
other age than the first century, and proof is obtained from this source 
also in favour of the antiquity of the Scriptures of the New Testament. 
An argument to the same point of antiquity is drawn by Micuae is 
from the accordancy of the evangelic history and the apostolical epistles 
with the history and manners of the age to which they refer. “A 
Gr2ek or Roman Christian,” he observes, ‘ who lived in the second or 
third century, though as well versed in the writings of the ancients as 
Eustathius or Asconius, would still have been wanting in Jewish litera- 
ture; and a Jewish convert in those ages, even the most learned rabbi, 
would have been equally deficient in the knowledge of Greece and 
Rome. If then the New Testament, thus exposed to detection, (had it 
been an imposture,) is found, after the severest researches, to harmonize 
with the history, the manners, and the opinions of the first century, and 
since the more minutely we inquire, the more perfect we find the 
coincidence, we must conclude that it was beyond the reach of human 
abilities to effectuate so wonderful a deception.” 

The manner of the sacred writers is also in proof, that they were 
conscious of the truth of what they relate. The whole narrative is 
simple and natural. Even in the accounts given of the creation, the 
flood, the exodus from Egypt, and the events of the life and death of 
Christ, where designing men would have felt most inclined to endeavour 
to heighten the impression by glowing and elaborate description, the 
same chastened simplicity is preserved. ‘These sober recorders of 
events the most astonishing, are never carried away, by the circum. 
stances they relate, into any pomp of diction, into any use of superla 
tives. ‘There is not, perhaps, in the whole Gospel a single interjection 
not an exclamation, nor any artifice to call the reader’s attention to the 
marvels of which the relaters were the witnesses. Absorbed in their 
holy task, no alien idea presents itself to their mind: the object before 
them fills it. They never digress ; are never called away by the solicita 
tions of vanity, or the suggestions of curiosity. No image starts up to 
divert their attention, There is, indeed, in the Gospels much imagery, 
much allusion, much allegory, but they proceed from their Lord, and 
are recorded as his. ‘The writers never fill up the intervals between 
events. They leave circumstances to make their own impression, in- 
stead of helping out the reader by any reflections of their own. ‘They 
always feel the holy ‘ground on which they stand. They preserve 
the gravity of history and the severity of truth, without enlarging the 
outline or swelling the expression.’” (Mrs. Morn’s Character of St 
Paul.) 

Another source of INTERNAL EVIDENCE, arising from incidental com. . 
cidences, which, from “ their latency and minuteness,”’ must ve supposed 


A 


232 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. , [PART 


to have their foundation in truth, is opened, and ably illustrated by Dr 
Paley, in his “‘ Hore Pauline,” a work which will well repay the 
perusal. 

Much of the coLLATERAL EviDENCE of the truth of the Scriptures 
generally, and of Christianity in particular, has been anticipated in the 
course of this discussion, and need not again be resumed. ‘The agree. 
ment of the final revelation of the will of God, by the ministry of Christ 
and his apostles, with former authenticated revelations, has been pointed 
out’ so that the whole constitutes one body of harmonious doctrines, 
gradually introduced, and_at ‘length fully unfolded and confirmed. ‘The 
suitableness of the Christian revelation to the state of the world, at the 
time of its communication, follows from the view we have given of the 
necessity, not only of a revelation generally, but of such a revelation as 
the mercy of God has vouchsafed to the world through his Son. It has 
also been shown, that its historical facts accord with the credible histo- 
ries and traditions of the same time; that monuments remain to attest 
its truth, in the institutions of the Christian Church; and that adversa- 
ries have made concessions in its favour. (4) Our farther remarks on 
this subject, though many other interesting particulars might be embraced, 
must be confined to two particulars, but each of a very convincing cha- 
racter. ‘The first is, the marvellous diffusion of Christianity in the three 
first centuries ; the second is, the actual beneficial effect produced, and 
which is still producing, by Christianity upon mankind. 

With respect to the first, the fact to be accounted for is, that the first 
preachers of the Gospel, though unsupported by human power, and 
uncommended by philosophic wisdom, and even in opposition to both, 
succeeded in effecting a revolution in the opinions and manners of a great 
portion of the civilized world, to which there is no. parallel in the history 
of mankind. (5) ‘Though aspersed by the slander of the malicious, 
and exposed to the sword of the powerful, in a short period of time they 
induced multitudes of various nations, who were equally distinguished 


(4) The collateral testimony to certain facts mentioned in Scripture, from 
coins, medals, and ancient marbles, may be seen well applied in Horne’s Jntro- 
duction to the Study of the Scriptures, vol. i, p. 238. 

(5) The success of Mohammed, though sometimes pushed forward as a paral- 
lel, is, in fact, both as to the means employed and the effect produced, a perfect 
contrast. The means were conquest and compulsivn ; the effect was to legalize 
and sanctify, so to speak, the natural passions of men for plunder and sensual 
gratification ; and it surely argues either a very frail judgment, or a criminal dis 
position, to object, that a contrast so marked should ever have been exhibited as 
a correspondence, Men were persuaded, when they were not “‘orced, to join the 
ranks of the Arabian impostor by the hope of plunder, and a present and future 
life of brutal gratification. Men were persuaded to join the apostles by the evi 
uence of truth, and by the hope of future spiritual blessings, but with the certainty 
of present disgrace and suffering. 


6 
FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 233 


by the peculiarity of their manners, and the diversity of their language, 
to forsake the religion of their ancestors. The converts whom they 
made deserted ceremonies and institutions, which were defended by vigo- 
rous authority, sanctified by remote age, and associated with the most 
alluring gratification of the passions.” (Krrr’s' Sermons at the Bampton 
Lecture.) 

After their death the same doctrines were taught, and the same effects 
followed, though successive and grievous persecutions were waged 
against all who professed their faith in Christ, by successive emperors 
and inferior magistrates. Tacitus, about A. D. 62, speaking of Chris.’ 
tianity says, “ This pernicious superstition, though checked for a while, 
broke out again, and spread not only over Judea, but reached the city 
of Rome also. At first they only were apprehended who confessed 
themselves to be of that sect; afterward a vast multitude were discover. 
ed, and cruelly punished.” Pliny, the governor of Pontus and Bithy- 
nia, near eighty years after the death of Christ, in his well-known letter 
to Trajan, observes, “The contagion of this superstition has not only 
invaded cities, but the smaller towns also, and the whole country.” He 
speaks too of the idol temples having been “almost forsaken.” To the 
same effect the Christian fathers speak. About A. D. 140, Justin Mar- 
tyr writes, “There is not a nation, Greek or Barbarian, or of any other 
name, even of those who wander in tribes, and live in tents, among 
whom prayers and thanksgivings are not offered to the Father and Crea- 
tor of the universe in the name of the crucified Jesus.” In A. D. 190, 
Tertullian, in his Apology, appeals to the Roman governors—“ We were 
but of yesterday, and we have filled your cities and towns; the camp, 
the senate, and the forum.” In A. D. 220, Origen says, “ By the good 
providence of God, the Christian religion has so flourished and increased, 
that it is now preached freely, and without molestation.” ‘These repre- 
sentations, Gibbon contends, are exaggerations on both sides, produced 
by the fears of Pliny, and the zeal of the Christian fathers. But even 
granting some degree of exaggeration arising not designedly from warm 
feelings, an unquestionable occurrence proves the futility of the excep- 
tions taken to these statements by the elegant but infidel historian. The 
great fact is, that in the year A. D. 300, Christianity became the esta- 
blished religion of the Roman empire, and paganism was abolished : and 
it follows from this event, that the religion which thus became triumph- 
ant after unparalleled trials and sufferings must have established itself, 
previously to its receiving the. sanction of the state, in the belief of a 
great majority of the one hundred and twenty millions of people supposed 
to be contained in the empire, or no emperor would have been insane 
enough to make the attempt to change the religion of so vast a state, 
nor, had he made it, could he have succeeded. 

The success of Christianity in the three centuries preceding Constan. 


234 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


tine, has justly been considered as in no unimportant sense miraculous, 
and as such, an illustrious proof of its Divinity. “The obstacles which 
opposed the first reception of Christianity were so numerous and formida. 
ble, and the human instruments employed for its diffusion so apparently 
weak and insufficient, that a comparison between them will not only 
show that the passions and opposition of man, far from impeding he 
Divine designs, may ultimately become the means of their perfect accum. 
plishment, but will fully demonstrate the Divine origin of Christianity 
by displaying the powertul assistance which the Almighty supplied for 
‘its establishment.” (Kerr’s Sermons.) The astonishing succéss of 
Christianity under such circumstances, and at so early a period, affords 
a strong confirmation to the truth of mzracles, because it implies them, 
as no other means can be conceived by which an attention so general 
should have been excited to a religion which was not only without the 
sanction of authority and rank, but opposed by both; the scene of whose 
facts lay in a province the people of which were despised ; and whose 
doctrines held out nothing but spiritual attainments. By the effect of 
miracles during the lives of the first preachers, public curiosity was ex- 
cited, and they obtained ‘an audience which they could not otherwise 
have commanded. This power of working miracles was transmitted to 
their successors, and continued until the purposes of Infinite Wisdom 
were accomplished. They decreased in number in the second century, 
and left but a few traces at the close of the third. (6) The increase 
of Christians implied even more than miracles ; such was the holy cha- 
racter of the majority, during the continuance of the reproach and _per- 
secutions which followed the Christian name; such the patience with 
which they suffered, and the fortitude with which they died; that the 
influence of God upon their hearts is as manifest in the new and hallow- 
ed character which distinguished them, and the meek, forgiving, and 
passive virtues which they exhibited, to the astonishment of the heathen, 
as his power in the miracles by which their attention was first drawn 
to examine that truth which they afterward believed and held fast 
to death. | 

The actual effect produced by this new religion upon society, and 
which it is still producing, is another point in the collateral evidence : 
for Christianity has not only an adaptation for improving the condition 


(6) Attempts have been made to deny the existence of miraculous powers in 
the ages immediately succeeding that of the apostles, but it stands on the 
unanimous and successive testimony of the fathers. Gibbon, on this subject, has 
borrowed his objections from ‘* The Free Inquiry” of Dr. Middleton, whose belief 
in Christianity is very suspicious. This buok received many able answers; but 
none more so than one by the Rev. John Wesley. It is a triumph to truth to 
state, that Dr. Middleton felt himself obliged to give up his ground by shifting 
the question. 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. ps Fs) 


of society ; its excellence is not only to be argued from its effects stated 
on hypothetical circumstances ; but it has actually won its moral victo. 
ries, and in all ages has exhibited its trophies. In every pagan country 
where it has prevailed, it has abolished idolatry with its sanguinary and 
polluted rites. It also effected this mighty revolution, that the sanctious 
of religion should no longer be in favour of the worst passions and prac- 
tices. but be directed against them. It has raised the standard of mo- 
rality, and by that means, even where its full effects have not been 
suflered to display themselves, has insensibly improved the manners of 
every Christian state: what heathen nations are, in point of morals, is 
now well known ; and the information on this subject which for several 
years past has been increasing, has put it out of the power of infidels to 
urge the superior manners of either China or Hindostan. It has abolished 
infanticide and human sacrifices, so prevalent among ancient and modern 
heathens ; pu! an end to polygamy and divorce ; and, by the institution 
of marriage in an indissoluble bond, has given birth to a felicity and 
sanctity in the domestic circle which it never before knew. It has ex. 
alted the: condition and character of woman, and by that means has 
humanized man ; given refinement and delicacy to society ; and created 
a new and important affection in the human breast—the love of woman 
founded on esieem; an affection generally unknown to heathens the 
most refined. (7) It abolished domestic slavery in ancient Europe ; and 
from its principles the struggle which is now maintained with African 
slavery draws its energy, and promises a triumph as complete. It has 
given a milder character to war, and taught modern nations to treat 
their prisoners with humanity, and to restore them by exchange to their 
respective countries. It has laid the basis of a jurtsprudence more just 
and equal; given civil rights to subjects, and placed restraints on abso- 
Jute power; and crowned its achievements by its charity. Hospitals, 
schools, and many other institutions for the aid of the aged and the poor, 
are almost exclusively its own creations, and they abound most where 
its influence is most powerful. The,s-me effects to this day are result- 
ing from its influence in those heathen countries into which the Gospel 
has been carried by missionaries sent out from this and other Christian 
states. In some of them idolatry has been renounced ; infants, and 
widows, and aged persons who would have been immolated to their gods 
or abandoned by their cruelty, have been preserved, and are now “the 
living to praise its Divine Author, as they do at this day.” In other 
instances the light is prevailing against the darkness ; and those systems 
of dark and sanguinary superstition which have stood for ages only to 
nollute and oppress, without any symptom of decay, now betray the 


(7) Among the Greeks, the education of women was chiefly confined tr 
courtezuns. 


236 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. PART 


shocks they have sustained by the preaching of the Gospel of Christ 
ana nod to their final fall. (8) ; 


CHAPTER XX. é 
MisceLLANEous OpsEcTIONS ANSWERED. 


Tne system of revealed religion contained in the Old and New Tes- 
taments, being opposed tothe natural corrupt inclinations, and often to 
the actual practice of men; laying them under rules to which they are 
averse ; threatening them with a result which they dread; holding out 
to them no pleasures but such as they distaste, and no advantages but 
those which they would gladly exchange for a perpetual life of sinful 
indulgence on earth; will be regarded by many of the most reflecting 
among them as a system of restraint; and must therefore often excite 
either direct hostility, or a disposition to encourage and admit sugges- 
tions tending to weaken its authority. It may be added that, as the 
Scriptures cannot be known without careful examination, which implies 
a serious habit not to be found in the majority, objections have been 
often raised by ingenious men in great ignorance of the volume itself 
against which they are directed; and being sometimes urged on the 
ground of some popular view of a fact or doctrine, they have been re- 
ceived as carelessly as they were uttered. Philosophers too have some- 
times constructed hasty theories on various subjects, which have either 
contradicted or been thought to contradict some parts of the Scriptures ; 
and the array of science, and the fascination of novelty, have equally 
deceived and misled the theorist himself and his disciples. Since the 
revival of letters, and in countries where freedom of discussion has been 
allowed, objectors have arisen, and numerous attempts have been made 
to shake the faith of mankind. ‘That specious kind of infidelity known 
by the name of “ Deism,” made its appearance in Italy and France about 
the middle of the sixteenth century, and in England early in the seven- 
teenth. Under this appellation, and that of “The Religion of Nature,” 
each adopted to deceive the unwary, the attack upon Christianity was 
at first cautious, and accompanied with many professions of regard for 
its manifold excellencies. Lord Herserr of Cherbury was the first 
who in this country advocated this system, He lays down five primary 
articles of religion, as containing every thing necessary to be believed; 
and as he contends they are all discoverable by our natural faculties, 
they supersede, he informs us, the necessity of a revelation. ‘They are 


(8) For an ample ‘llustration of the actual effects of Christianity upon society, 
see Bishop Porreus’s Beneficial Effects of Christianity. and Ryan’s History of the 
Effects of Religion on Mankind. 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 237 


—that there is a supreme God—that he is chiefly to be worshipped—that 
piety and virtue are the principal part of his worship-—that repentance 
expiates offence—and that there is a state of future rewards and punish. 
ments. The history of infidelity from this time is a striking comment 
spon the words of St. Paul, “ But evil men and seducers shall wax worse 
and worse, deceiving and being deceived ;” for, in the progress of this 
deadly error, all Lord Herbert’s five articles of natural religion have 
heen questioned or given up by those who followed him in his funda- 
mental principle, “that nothing can be admitted which is not discover- 
able by our natural faculties.” Horses, who succeeded next in this 
warfare agiinst the Bible, if he acknowledges that there is a God, repre- 
sents him as corporeal, and our duty to him as a chimera, the civil 
magistrate being suprume in all things both civil and sacred. Snarres- 
BURY insists that the doctrine of rewards and punishments is degrading 
to the understanding and detrimental to moral virtue. Hume denies the 
relation between cause and effect, and thus attempts to overthrow the 
argument for the existence of God from the frame of the universe. By 
others the worship of God, which Lord Herbert advocates, has been 
rejected as unreasonable, because he needs not our praises, and is not 
to be turned from his purposes by owr prayers. As all law, of Divine 
authority, is on this system renounced, so “ piety and virtue” must be 
understood to be what every man chooses to consider them. which 
amounts to their annihilation ; and as for future reward and punishment, 
philosophy, since Lord Herbert’s days, has discovered that the soul of 
man is material; or rather, being a mere result of the organization of the 
body, that it dies with it. ‘The great principle of the English proto-infidel, 
“the sufficiency of our natural faculties to form a religion for ourselves, 
and to decide upon the merits of revealed truth,” is, however, the princi- 
ple of all; and this being once conceded, the instances just given are 
sufficiently in proof that the cable is slipped, and that every one is left 
to take his course wherever the winds and the currents may impel his 
unpiloted, uncharted, and uncompassed bark. This grand principle 
of error, between which and absolute Atheism there are but a few steps, 
has been largely refuted in the foregoing pages, and the claims of the 
Holy Scriptures to be considered as a revelation from God, established 
by arguments, the force of which in all other cases is felt, and acknow- 
ledged, and acted upon even by unbelievers themselves. If this has been 
done satisfactorily, the objections which remain are of little weight, were 
they even less capable of being repelled; and if no answer can be found 
to some of the difficulties which may be urged, this circumstance is much 
more in accordance with the truth of a revelation, than it would be with 
its falsehood. “ We do not deny,” says an excellent writer on the evi- 
dences of Christianity, (Dr. OLinrnus Grecory,) “that the scheme of - 
revelation has its difficulties ; for if the things of nature are often diff. 


238 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES | [PART 


vult to comprehend, it would be strange indeed it supernatural matters 
were so simple, and obvious, and suited to fi.ite capacities, as never to 
startle and puzzle us at all. He who denies the Bible to have come 
from God because of these difficulties, may for exactly the same reason 
deny that the world was formed by him.” 

The mere cavils of infidel writers may be hastily dismissed ; the nost 
plausible objections shall be considered more at large. As to the former, 
few of them could have been urged if those who have adduced them had 
consulted the works of commentators, and Biblical critics, writings with 
which it is evident they-have little acquaintance ; and thus they have 
shown haw ill disposed they have been to become fully acquainted with 
the subjects which they have subjected to their criticism. To this may 
be added their ignorance of the idiom of the Hebrew, the language of 
the Old Testament ; their inattention to the ancient manners and cus. 
toms of the countries where the sacred writers lived, to occasional errors 
in the transcription of numerous copies which may he rectified by colla- 
tion, and to the different readings, which, to a candid criticism, would 
generally furnish the solution of the difficulty. 

The Bible has been vehemently assaulted, because it represents God 
as giving command to the Israelites to exterminate the nations of Ca. 
naan; but a few remarks will be sufficient to prove how little weight 
there is in the charges which, on this account, have been made against 
the amuor of the Pentateuch. The objection cannot be argued upon 
the mere ground that it is contrary to the Divine justice or mercy to cut 
off a people indiscriminately, from the eldest to the youngest, since this 
is done in earthquakes, pestilences, &c. The cholera morbus, which 
has been for four years past wasting various parts of Asia, has probably 
destroyed half a million of persons of all ages. The character of the — 
God of nature is not therefore contradicted by that ascribed to the God 
of the Bible. The whole objection resolves itself into this question : 
Was it consistent with the charac‘er of God to employ human agents in 
this work of destruction? Who can prove that it was not? No one; 
and yet here lies the whole stress of the objection. The Jews were not 
rendered more cruel by their being so commissioned ; for we find them 
much more merciful in their institutions than other ancient nations ;-— 
nor can this instance be pleaded in favour of exterminating wars, for 
there was in the case a special commission for a special purpose, and 
by that it was limited. Other considerations are alsc to be included. 
The sins of the Canaanites were of so gross a nature, that it was neces- 
sary to mark them with signal punishments for the benefit of surround- 
ing nations; the employing of the Israelites, as instruments under a 
special and publicly proclaimed commission, connected the punishment 
more visibly with the offence, than if it had been inflicted by the array 
of warring elements, while the Israelites themselves would be moce 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 23% 


deeply impressed with the guilt of idolatry, and its ever accompanying 
polluted and sanguinary rites ; and finally the Canaanites had been long 
spared, and in the meantime both warned by partial judgments, and 
reproved by the remaining adherents of the patriarchal religion who 
resided among them. . 

Thus the objection rests upon no foundation. The destruction of in- 
fants, so often dwelt upon, takes place in nature and providence ; the 
objection to the employment of human agents, arising from habits of in- 
humanity being thereby induced, assumes what is false in fact ; for this 
effect upon the Jews was prevented by the circumstance of their know- 
ing that they acted as ministers of the Divine displeasure, and under 
his commission; and some important reasons may be discovered for 
executing the judgment by men, and especially this, that it might exhibit 
the evil of a sanguinary and obscene idolatry. 

That law in Deuteronomy, which authorizes parents, the father and 
the mother, to bring “a stubborn and rebellious son,” who was also “a 
glutton and a drunkard,” before the elders of the city, that, if guilty, he 
might be stoned, has been called inhuman and brutal. In point of fact, 
it was, however, a merciful regulation. In almost all ancient nations, 
parents had the power of taking away the lives of their children. This 
was a branch of the old patriarchal authority which did not all at once 
merge into the kingly governments which were afterward established. 
There is reason therefore to believe that it was possessed by the heads 
of families among the Israelites, and that this was the first attempt to 
control it, by obliging the crimes alleged against: their children to be 
proved before regular magistrates, and thus preventing the effects of 
unbridled passions. 

' The intentional offering of Isaac by Abraham has also had its share 
of censure. ‘The answer is, 1. That Abraham, who was in the habit 
of sensible cormmmunication with God, could have no doubt of the Divine 
command, and of the right of God to take away the life he had given, 
2. That he proceeded to execute the command of God, in faith, as the 
Apostle Paul has stated, that God would raise his son from the dead. 
The whole transaction was extraordinary, and cannot therefore be 
judged by common rules; and it could only be fairly objected to, if it 
had been so stated as to encourage human sacrifices. Here, however, 
are sufficient guards ; an indubitable Divine command was given; the 
sacrifice was prevented by the same authority; and the history stands 
in a book which represents human sacrifices as an abomination to God. 

Indelicacy and immodesty have been charged upon some parts of the 
Scriptures. This objection has something in it which indicates malig- 
nity, rather than an honest and principled exception: for in no instance 
are any statements made in order to incite impurity; and _ nothing, 
throughout the whole Scripture, is represented as more offensive to God, 


240 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES [PARP 


or as more certainly excluding persons from the kingdom of heaven, 
than the unlawful gratification of the senses. It is also to be noted, that 
many of the passages objected to are in the laws and prohibitions of 
both Testaments, and as well might the statute and common law of this 
country be the subject of reprehension, and be held up as tending to 
encourage vices of various kinds, because they must, with more or less 
of circumstantiality, describe them. We are fartner to take into ac 
count the simplicity of manners and language in early times. We 
observe, even among the peasantry of modern states, a language, on 
the subjects referred to, which is more direct, and what refined society 
would call gross; but greater real indelicacy does not necessarily fol- 
low. Countries and classes of people might be pointed out, where the 
language which expresses sensual indulgence has more of caution and 
of periphrasis, while the known facts show that their morals are ex- 
ceedingly polluted. 

Several objections which have been raised against characters and 
transactions in the books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, are dissipated 
by the single consideration, that where they are obviously immoral or 
unjustifiable they are never approved ; and are merely stated as facts of 
history. ‘The conduct of Ehud, of Samson, and of Jephthah, may be 
given as instances. — 

The advice of David, when on his death bed, respecting Joab and 
Shimei, has been attributed to his private resentment. This is not the 
fact. He spoke in his character of king and magistrate, and gave his 
advice un public grounds, as committing the kingdom to his son. 

The conduct of David also toward the Ammonites, in putting them 
“under saws and harrows of iron,” has been the subject of severe ani- 
madversion. But the expression means no more than that he employed 
them in laborious works, as sawing, making iron harrows, hewing wood, 
and making bricks, the Hebrew prefix signifying to as well as under. 
“ He put them to saws and harrows of iron (some render it tron mines,) 
and to axes of iron, and made them to pass through the brick kiln.” 

With respect to the imprecations found in many parts of Scripture 
and which have been represented as expressions of reyenge and malice, 
it has been often and satisfactorily observed, that they are predictions 
and not anathemas, the imperative mood being put for the future tense, 
according to the Hebrew idiom. 

These have been adduced as specimens of the objections urged by 
infidel writers against the Scriptures, and of the ease with which they 
may be met. For others of a similar kind, and for answers to objec- 
tions founded upon supposed contradictions between different passages 
of Scripture, reference must be made to commentators. (9) With 


(9) See also a copious collection of these supposed contradictions, with judi. 
einne ¢x*'anations, in the Appendix to vol. i. of Horne’s Introduction, We 


FIRST.) THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, 24) 


respect to all of them, it has been well observed, “that a little skill m the 
original languages of the Scriptures, their idioms and properties, and in 
the times, occasions, and scope of the several books, as well as in the 
antiquities and customs of those countries which were the scenes of the 
transactions recorded, will always clear the main difficulties.” ’ 

To some other objections of a philosophical kind, as being of a more 
in:posing aspect, the answers may be more extended. 

Between natural philosophy and revelation—the book of nature and 
the book of God—it has been a favourite practice with unbelievers to 
institute a contrast, and to set the plainness and uncontradictory charac- 
ter of the one against the mysteries and difficulties of the other. The 
common ground on which all such objections rest, is an unwillingness 
to admit as truth, and to receive as established and authorized doctrine, 
what is incomprehensible. They contend, that if a revelation has been 
made, there can be no mystery in it, for that is a contradiction ; and 
that if mysteries, that is, things incomprehensible, are held to be a part 
of it, this is fatal to its claims as a revelation. The sophism is easily 
answered. Many doctrines, many duties, are comprehensible enough ; 
no mystery at all is involved in them; and as to incomprehensible sub- 
‘ects, nothing is more undoubted, as we have already shown, than that 
a fact may be the subject of revelation, as that God is eternal and om- 
nipresent, and still remain mysterious and incomprehensible. The fact 
itself is not hidden, or expressed in language or symbol so equivocal as 
to throw the meaning into difficulty, the only sense in which the argu- 
ment could be valid. As a fact, it is clearly revealed that these are 
attributes of the Divine Nature ; but both, notwithstanding that clear and 
indubitable revelation, are still incomprehensible. It is not revealed 
now God is eternal and omnipresent, nor is such a revelation pretended ; 
but it is revealed roar He 1s so—not How a trinity of persons exists 
in unity of essence ; but ruar sucu Is the mode of the Divine existence. 
If however men hesitate to admit incomprehensible subjects as matters 
of faith, they cannot be permitted to fly for relief from revelation to 
philosophy, and much less to set up its superior claims, as to clearness 
of manifestation, to the Holy Scriptures. There too it will be seen, 
that mystery and revelation go inseparably together ; that he who will 
not admit the mystery cannot have the benefit of the revelation; and 
that he who takes the revelation of facts, embraces at the same time the 
mystery of their causes. The facts, for instance, of the attraction of 
gravitation, of cohesion, of electricity, of magnetism, of congelation, 
of thawing, of evaporation, are ell admitted. The experimental and 
mductive philosophy of modern times, has made many revelations of the 
relations and in some instances of the proximate causes of these pheno. 
mena; but the real causes are all confessedly hidden. With respect 


to mechanics, says a writer who has devoted his life to philosopr.cal 
Vor. I 16 


24 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. ' PART 


studies, (Dr. Grucory’s Letters on the Christian Relrgion,) “ this science 
is conversant about force, matter, time, motion, space ; each of these has 
occasioned the most elaborate disquisitions, and the most violent disputes. 
Let it be asked, What is force? If the answerer be candid, his reply 
will be, ‘I cannot tell so as to satisfy every inquirer, or so as to enter 
into the essence of the thing.’ Again, What is matter ? ‘I cannot tell.’ 
What is motion? «I cannot tell;’” and so of the rest. “The fact of the 
communication of motion from one body to another, is as inexplicable 
as the communication of Divine influences. How, then, can the former 
be admitted with any face, while the latter is denied solely on the ground 
of its incomprehensibility ? 

« But perhaps I may be told, that although things which are incom. 
prehensible occur in our physical and mixed inquiries, they have no 
place in ‘ pure mathematics, where all is not only demonstrable, but in- 
telligible.’ This, again, is an assertion which [ cannot admit; and for 
the denial of which I shall beg leave to produce my reasons, as this 
will, I apprehend, make still more in favour of my general argument. 
Now, here it is known, geometricians can demonstrate that there are 
curves which approach continually to some fixed right line, without the 
possibility of ever meeting it. Such, for example, are hyperbolas, 
which continually approach toward their asymptotes, but cannot possi. 
bly meet them, unless an assignable finite space can become equal ta 
nothing. Such, again, are conchoids, which continually approach tc 
their directrices, yet can never meet them, unless a certain point can 
be both beyond and in contact with a given line at the same moment. 
Mathematicians can also demonstrate that a space infinite in one sense, 
may, by its rotation, generate a solid of finite capacity ; as is the case 
with the solid formed by the rotation of a logarithmic curve of infinite 
length upon its axis, or that formed by the rotation of an Apollonian 
hyperbola upon its asymptote. They can also show in numerous in- 
stances, that a variable space shall be continually augmenting, and yet 
never become equal to a certain finite quantity ; and they frequently 
make transformations with great facility and neatness, by means of ex. 
pressions to which no definite ideas can be attached. Can we, for 
example, cbtain any clear comprehension, or indeed any notion at all, 
of the value of a power whose exponent is an acknowledged imaginary 
quantity, as « /—17? Can we, in like manner, obtain any distinct idea 
of a series constituted of an infinite number of terms? In each case 
the answer, I am convinced, must be in the negative. Yet the science, 
in which these and numerous other incomprehensibles occur, is called 
Mathesis, rue piscirLinE, because of its incomparable superiority to 
other studies in evidence and certainty, and, therefore, its singular adap- 
tation to discipline the mind. How does it happen, now, that when the 
investigation is bent toward objects which cannot be comprehended, the 


FIRST.) THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. » 243 


mind arrives at that in which it acquiesces as certainty, and rests satis. 
fied? It is not, manifestly, because we have a distinct perception of the 
nature of the objects of the inquiry ; (for that is precluded by the sup- 
position, and, indeed, by the preceding statement,) but because we have 
such a distinct perception of the relation which those objects bear one 
toward another, and can assign positively, without danger of error, the 
exact relation, as to identity or diversity, of the quantities before us, at 
every step of the process.” 

Modern astronomy has displayed the immense extent of the universe 
and by analogical reasoning has made it probable, at least, that the 
planets of our and of other systems may be inhabited by rational and moral 
beings like ourselves; and from these premises infidel philosophy has 
argued with apparent humility for the insignificance of the human race, 
and the improbability of supposing that a Divine person should have been 
sent into this world for its instruction and salvation, when, in comparison 
with the solar system, it is but a point, and that system itself, in comparison 
of the universe, may be nothing more. 

Plausible as this may appear, nothing can have less weight, even if 
only the philosophy and not the theology of the case be taken into con- 
sideration. ‘The intention with which man is thus compared with the 
universe is to prove his insignificance ; and the comparison must be 
made either between man and the vastness of planetary and stellar matter, 
or between the number of mankind, and the number of supposed planet- 
ary inhabitants. Ifthe former, we may reply with Dr. Beattie, “Great 
extent is a thing so striking to our imagination, that sometimes, in the 
moment of forgetfulness, we are apt to think nothing can be import- 
ant but what is of vast corporeal magnitude. And yet, even to our 
apprehension, when we are willing to be rational, how much more sublime 
and more interesting an object is a mind like that of Newton, than the 
unwieldy force and brutal stupidity of such a monster as the poets describe 
Polyphemus ? Who, that had it in his power, would scruple to destroy a 
whale in order to save a child? Nay, when compared with the happiness 
of one immortal mind, the greatest imaginable accumulation of inanimate 
substance must appear an insignificant thing. ‘If we consider,’ says 
Bentley, ‘the dignity of ar intelligent being, and put that in the scale 
against brute and inanimate matter, we may affirm, without overvaluing 
human nature, that the soul of one virtuous man ts of greater worth and 
excellency, than the sun and his planets, and all the stars in the world.’ 
Let us not then make bulk the standard of value; or judge of the import- 
ance of man from the weight of his body, or from the size or situation 
of the planet that is now his place of abode.” 

To the same effect an ingenious and acute writer remarks upon a 
passage in Saussure, (Voyages dans les Alpes,) who speaks of men in the . 
phrase of the modern philosophy, as “ the little beings which crawl upon 


w 


- 


‘ye THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART _ 


the surface of the earth,” and as shrinking into nothing both as to “ space 
and ¢2me,”’ in vomparison with the vast mountains and “ the great epochas 
uf nature.” “If,” says Mr. Granville Penn, (Comparative Estimate of 
the Mineral and Mosaic Geologies,) “ there is any sense or virtue in this 
reflection, it must consist in duly estimating the relative importance of 
the two magnitudes and durations, and in concluding logically, the com. 
parative insignificancy of the smaller. And it will then necessatily follow, 
that the insignificancy of the smaller would lessen, in the same proportion 
in which it might increase in bulk. If the little beings therefore were 
to be magnified in the proportions of 2, 3, 4, &c, their insignificancy, 
relatively to the great features of the globe, would necessarily diminish 
in the same ratio. The smaller the disproportion between the man and 
-he mountain, the less would be the relative insignificance of the former ; 
and although the increase of magnitude in the smaller object be ever so 
inconsiderable, yet if it is positive and real, its dignity must be proportion- 
ately increased in the true nature of things: the bigger the being that 
crawls upon the surface of this globe, the less absurd would be the sup- 
position that he is the final object of this terrestrial creation. The Irish 
giant, therefore, whose altitude exceeded the measure of ezght feet, 
would exceed in relative dignity, by the same proportion, Bacon and 
Newron, whose height did not attain to siz feet. If this is nonsense, 
then must that also be nonsense from which it is the genuine conclusion : 
viz. that the material magnitudes of the little beings, or their duration 
upon the earth on which they ‘crawl,’ determines, in any manner, 
their importance, in the creation, relatively to the primordial mountains 
which arise above it, or to the extent of the regions which may be sur. 
veyed from their summits. For if the same physically small beings pos- 
sess another magnitude, which can be brought to another and a different 
scale of computation from that of physical or material magnitude ; a scale 
infinitely surpassing in importance the greatest measures of that magnitude ; 
then there will be nothing astonishing or irrational in the ‘supposition, 
that the highest mountains, and the widest regions, and the entire system 
to which they pertain, may be subservient to the ends of those beings, 
and to that other system to which they pertain ; which latter will thus 
be found superior in importance to the former. Such a scale is that, by 
which the intelligent, moral, and immortal nature of MAN is to be measured, 
and which the sacred historian calls, a formation ‘ after the image and 
likeness of Gon ;’ a scale so little taken into the contemplation of the 
science of mere physics. As soon, however, as that moral scale of 
magnitude once supersedes the physical scale in the apprehension of the 
mind ; as soon as the mind perceives, that the duration of that intelligent 
moral nature infinitely exceeds the vastest ‘ epocha of nature’ which the 
magination of the mineral geology can represent to itself, and that, 
hough the physical nature of man is Jimited to a very small measnre of 


v 


CIRST.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, 245 


tine, yet his moral nature is unlimited in time, and will outlast all the. 
mountains of the globe; it then perceives, at the same moment, the 
counterfeit quality of the refleetion, which at first appeared so sublime 
and so humble, so profound and so devout. The sublimity and humility 
betray themselves to be the disparagement and degradation of our nature ; 
the profundity is found to be mere surface, and the devotion to be a 
-etrocession from the light of revelation.” 

If the comparison of man with mere material magnitude will not -hen 
support this effort to effect his degradation, and to shame him out of his 
trust in the loving kindness of his God; if the comparison be made 
between things which have no relations in common, and is therefore 
absurd ; as little will it serve this unnatural attempt to prostrate man to 
an insect rank, and to inspire him with reptile feelings, to conclude his* 
insignificance from the number of other beings. For it is plain that their 
number alters not his real character ; he is still immortal, though myriads 
beside him are immortal, and still he has his deep capacity of pleasure 
and of pain. Unless, therefore, it could be proved that the care of God 
for each must be diminished as the number of his creatures is increased ; 
there is, as Mr. Penn has stated it, neither “sense nor virtue” in such 
reflections upon the littleness of man; and they imply, indeed, a base 
and an unworthy reflection upon the supreme Creator himself, as though 
he could not bestow upon all the beings he has made a care and a love 
adequate to their circumstances. What man is with respect to God, can 
only be collected from the Divine procedures toward him; and these 
are sufficient to excite the devout exclamations of the psalmist, “ What 
is man that ruovu art MINDFUL of him? or the son of man that THOU 
visirest him?” That he has not only been made by God, but that he 
is governed by his providence, none but Atheists will deny; but any 
argument drawn from such premises as the above would conclude as 
forcibly against providence, as it can be made to conclude against 
redemption. ‘Our Saviour,” says Dr. Beattie, “as if to obviate 
objections of this nature, expresses most emphatically the superintending 
care of Providence, when he teaches that it is God who adorns the grass 
of the field, that without him a sparrow falls not on the ground, and that 
even the hairs of our head are numbered. Yet this is no exaggeration . 
but must, if God is omniscient and almighty, be literally true. By a 
stupendous exuberance of animal, vegetable, and mineral production, and 
by an apparatus still more stupendous (if that were possible) for the dis- 
tribution of light and heat, he supplies the means of life and comfort to 
the short-lived inhabitants of this globe. Can it then appear incredible ; 
nay, does not this consideration render it in the highest degree probable, 
that he has also prepared the means of eternal happiness for beings, 
whom he has formed for eternal duration, whom he has endowed with 
faculties so noble as those of the human soul, and for whose accommo 


246 THEOLOGICAL INSTITETEs. [PAh2 


dation chiefly, during their pre ent state of trial, he has provided all the 
magniticence of this sublunary world ?” 

There is, however, another consideration, which gives a sublime and 
overwhelming grandeur to the Scripture view of the redemption of the 
race of man, and of which, for the want of acquaintance with our sacred 
writings, infidel philosophers appear never to have entertained the leas: 
conception. It is the moral connection of this world with the whele 
-niverse of intelligent creatures ; and the “ intention” there was in the 
Divine mind to convey to other beings, by the history and great results 
of his moral government over one branch of his universal family, a view 
of his own perfections ; of the duties and dangers of created and finite 
beings ; of transgression and holiness, in their principles and in their 
effects; by a course of action so much more influential than abstract 
truth. Intimations of this great and impressive view are found in various 
passages of the New Testament, and it opens a scene of inconceivable 
moral magnificence—“ To the intent, that to the principalities and powers 
in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom 
of God.” (1) = . 

It has been objected to the Mosaic chronology, that it fixes the era 
of creation only about four thousand years earlier than the Christian 
era; and against this, evidence has been brought from two sources— 
the chronology of certain ancient nations, and the structure of the 
earth. 

The objections drawn from the former of these sources have of late 
rapidly weakened, and are in fact given up by many whose deference 
to the authority of Scripture is very slight, though but a few years ago 
nothing was more confidently urged by skeptical writers than the refu- 
tation of Moses by the Chinese, Hindoo, and Egyptian chronologies, 
founded, as it was then stated, on very ancient astronomical observations 


(1) ‘In this our first period of existence, our eye cannot penetrate beyond the 
present scene, and the human race appears one great and separate community; | 
but with other worlds, and other communities, we probably may, and every argu- 
ment for the truth of our religion gives us reason to think that we shall, be con- 
nected hereafter. And if by our behaviour we may, even while here, as our Lord 
positively affirms, heighten in some degree the felicity of angels, our salvation 
may hereafter be a matter of importance, not tous only, but to many other orders 
+t immortal beings. They, it is true, will not suffer for our guilt, nor be rewarded 
.v¢ our obedience. But it is not absurd to imagine, that our fall and recovery may 
Le useful to them as an example; and that the Divine grace manifested in our 
redemption may raise their adoration and gratitude into higher raptures, and 
quicken their ardour to inquire with ever new delight, into the dispensations ot 
infinite wisdom. This is not mere conjecture. It derives plausibility frem many 
analogies in nature, as well as from Holy Writ, which represents the mystery of 
our redemption as an object of curiosity to superior beings, and our repentance ay 
an occasion of their joy.” (Dr. Bearrin’s Evidences of the Christian Religion 
See also Dr. Cuatmers’s Discourses on the Modern Astronom~ \ 


FIRST.| THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 247 


preserved to the present day. It is however now clearly proved, that 
the astronomical tables, from which it has been attempted to assign a 
prodigious antiquity to the Hindoos, have been calculated backward ; 
(Cuvier’s Theory of the Earth ;) and among the Chinese the earliest 
astronomical observation that appears to rest upon good grounds, is now 
found to be one made not more than two thousand nine hundred years 
ago. (Cuvirr’s Theory of the Earth.) As for the conclusion drawn 
from the supposed zodiacs in the temples of Esneh and Dendara in 
Egypt, it is now strongly doubted whether the figures represented upon 
them are astronomical or mythological, that is, whether they are zodiacs 
at all. ‘Their astronomical character is strongly denied by Dr. Richard- 
son, a late traveller, who examined them with great care; and who 
gives large reasons for his opmion. Even if the astronomical character 
of these assumed zodiacs be allowed, they are found to prove nothing. 
M. Biot, an eminent French mathematician, has recently fixed the date 
of the oldest: of them at only seven hundred and sixteen years before 
(Christ. - 

Against the excessive antiquity assigned to some ancient states, or 
claimed by them, the science of geology has at length entered its pro- 
test; and though, as we shall presently see, it has originated chrono- 
logical objections to the Mosaic date of the creation, on the origin of 
nations it has made a full concession to the history of the Scriptures. 
Cuvier observes—“ By a careful investigation of what has taken place 
on the surface of the globe since it has been laid dry for the last time, 
and its c~ntinents have assumed their present form, at least in such parts 
as are somewhat elevated above the level of the ocean, it may be clearly 
seen that this revolution, and consequently the establishment of our 
existing societies, could not have been very ancient.” (Theory of the 
Earth.) D’Aubuisson remarks, “that the soils of all the plains were 
deposited in the bosom of a tranquil water; that their actual order is 
only to be dated from the retreat of that water; and that the date of 
that period is not very ancient.” (Traié de Géognosie.) ‘ Dolomieu, 
Saussure, De Luc, and the most distinguished naturalists of the age, 
have coincided in this conclusion, to which they have been led by the 
evidence of various monuments and natural chronometers which the 
earth exhibits; and which remain perpetual vouchers for the veracity 
of the Mosaic chronology, with respect to the epocha of the revolution 
which the Mosaical history relates.” (2) 


(2) Penn’s Comparative Estimate, g-c. Professor Jamieson, in his Mineralo- 
gical [llustrations of Cuvier’s Théory, observes, ‘‘ The front of Salisbury Craigs 
near Edinburgh, affords a fine example of the natural chronometer, described in 
the text. The acclivity is covered with loose masses that have fallen from the 
hill itself; and the quantity of debris is in proportion to the time which has 
elapsed since the waters of the ocean formerly covered the neighbouring country 


248 ' THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


From the absence of all counter evidence in the records of ancient 
natious, as well as from these philosophical conclusions, which are to be 
considered in the light of concessions made to the chronology of the 
Pentateuch, we may therefore conclude, that, as to the origin of nations 
and the period of the general deluge, the testimony of Scripture remains 
unshaken. 

Geology has, however, objected to the Mosaic date of the «rea.ton 
of the earth, which it is said affords a period too limited to account for 
various phenomena which modern researches have brought under con- 
sideration. ‘To the last general inundation of the earth, it is allowed, 
that no higher a date can be assigned than that which Moses ascribes to 
the flood of Noah; but several revolutions, each of which has changed 
the surface of the earth, are contended for, separated from each other 
by long intervals of time ; and, above all, it is assumed, that the elements 
of the primitive earths were contained in an “original chaotic fluid,” 
and that, in obeying the laws of the affinity of composition, they coalesced 
and grouped themselves together in different manners, and settled them- 
selves into order, according to certain laws of matter after an unassign- 
able series of ages. 'These are the views of Cuvier, D’Aubuisson, De 
Luc, and other eminent writers on this subject; and whatever they 
themselves might intend, they have been made use of by infidels to dis- 
credit the authority of the sacred historian. It has been replied, that 
the Bible not being intended to teach philosophy, it is not fair to try it 
by a philosophical standard. This however cannot be maintained in the 
case before us, though the observation is pertinent in others, as when 
the sun is said to have stood stil, popular language being adopted o 
render the Scriptures intelligible. If Moses professes by Divine insp, 
ration to give an account of the manner in which the world was framed, 
he must describe the facts as they occurred; and if he has assigned a 
date to its creation out of nothing, that date, if given by an infallible 
authority, cannot be contradicted by true philosophy. 

To allow time sufficient for the gradual processes of “ precipitation 
and crystalization,” by which the first formations of the solid earth are 
said to have been effected, others have conceded to the geologists of 
this class, that an antiquity of the earth much higher than that which 
appears on the face of the Mosaic account may be allowed without con- 
tradicting it, and be even deduced from it. They therefore interpret — 
the “ days” mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis as successive pe- 
riods of ages, and the evening and morning of those days are made the 


If a vast period of time had elapsed since the surface of the earth had assumed 
its present aspect, it is evident that long ere now the whole of this hill would 
have been enveloped in its own debris. We have here then a proof of the com- 
paratively short period since the waters left the surface of the globe,—a period 
not exceeding a few thousand years.” 


FIRST.} THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 249 


beginnings and ends of those imagined periods. (3) This interpretation 
is, however, too forced to be admitted in the case of so simple a narra- 
ive as that of Moses; and there would be as good a reason for thus 
extending tne duration of the term “day” whenever it occurs in his 
writings to an indefinite period, to the destruction of all chronological 
acc iracy and of all sobriety of writing. No true friend of revelation 
wil. wisk to see Moses defended against the assaults of philosophy in a 
‘uanner which, by obliging us to find a meaning in his writings far re- 
mote from the view of general readers, would render them inapplicable 
to the purpose of ordinary instruction. Beside, if we are to understand 
the first day to have been of indefinite length, a hundred, or a thousand, 
or a million of years, for instance, why not the seventh, the Sabbath also ? 
This opinion cannot therefore be consistently maintained, and we must 
conclude with Rosenmuller, “ Dies intelligendi sunt naturales, quorum 
unusquisque ab und vesper4 incipiens, altera terminatur ; quo modo Judi, 
et multi alii antiquissimi populi, dies numerarunt—that we are to under- 
stand natural days; each of which commencing from one evening is 
terminated by the next; in which manner the Jews, and many others of 
the most ancient nations, reckoned days.” 

By other believers in revelation who have allowed the two principles 
laid down by geologists to go unquestioned, viz. the original liquidity of 
the earth, holding the elements of all the subsequent formations in a state 
of solution ; and the necessity of a long course of ages to’complete those 
processes by which the earth should be brought into a fit state, so to 
speak, for the work of the six days, which in that case must be confined 
to mere arrangement ; another, and certainly a less objectionable inter- 
pretation of Moses than that which makes his natural days and nights 
terms for indefinite periods of time, has been adopted. “ Does Moses 
ever say, that when God created the heavens and the earth, he did more 
at the time alluded to than transform them out of previously existing 
materials? Or does he ever say, that there was not an interval of many 
ages between the first act of creation, described in the first verse of the 
book of Genesis, and said to have been performed at the beginning ; 
and those more detailed operations the account of which commences at 
the second verse, and which are described to us as having been per- 
formed in so many days? Or, finally, does he ever make us to under- 
stand that the genealogies of man went any farther than to fix the 
antiquity of the species, and, of consequence, that they left the antiquity 


(3 ** Most readers have presumed, that every night and day mentioned in the 
first chapter of Genesis must be strictly confined to the term of twenty-four hours, 
though there can be no doubt but that Moses never intended any such thing; for 
how could Moses intend to limit the duration of the day to its present length, 
before, according to his own. showing, the sun had begun to divide the day from 
the night’? (Manre.v’s Geology of Sussez.. 


‘ 


250 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


of the globe a free subject for the speculations of philosophers? We do 
not pledge ourselves for the truth of one or all of these suppositions, nor 
is it necessary we should. It is enough that any of them is infinitely 
more rational, than the rejection of Christianity in the face of its his- 
torical evidence.” (Cuatmers’s Evidences of the Christian Revelation. } 
“As to the period when this mass was made, Moses only says that it 
was ‘in the beginning,’—a period this, which might have been a milli 2 
of years before its arrangement.” (ManreLu’s Geology of Sussex.) 

To all these suppusitions, though not unsupported by the authority of 
some great critics, there are considerable objections ; and if the diff. 
culty of recouciling geological phenomena with the Mosaic chronu.ogy 
were greater than it appears, none of them ought hastily to be admitted. 
That creation, in the first verse of Genesis, signifies production out of 
nothing, and not out of pre-existent matter, though the original word 
may be used in both senses, is made a matter of faith by the Apostle 
Paul, who tells us, “that the things which are seen, were not made of 
things which do appear ;” wn ex paiwopsvav ra PAEropeva yeyovevou; which 
is sufficient to settle that point. By the same important passage it is 
also determined, that “the worlds were produced in their form, as well 
as substance, instantly out of nothing ; or it would not be true, that they 
were not made of things which do appear.” “The apostle states that 
these things were not made out of a pre-existent matter ; for, if they were, 
that matter, however extended or modified, must appear in that thing inte 
which it is compounded and modified ; therefore it could not be said, 
’ that the things which are seen, are not made of things that appear: and 
he shows us also, by these words, that the present mundane fabric was 
not formed or re-formed from one anterior, as some suppose.” (Dr. A 
CxiarKE in loc.) No interval of time is allowed in the account of the 
creation by Moses, between the creating and the framing of the worlds, 
(that is, the heavens and the earth simply,) so created and framed at 
once by the word of God. The natural sense too of the phrase “in the 
beginning,” is also thus preserved. ‘Thrown back, so to speak, into 
eternity without reference to time it has no meaning, or at best a very 
obscure one; but connected with time, the commencement of our mun- 
dane chronology, it has a definite and obvious sense. Moses begins his 
reckoning from the first creative act ;—from the creation of the “ heavens 
and the earth,” which was therefore a part of the work of the first natu- 
ral day. “In the first of these natural days, the whole mineral fabric 
of this globe was formed at once, of such size and figure, with such pro- 
perties, in such proportions to space, and with such arrangement of its 
naterials, as most conduced to the ends for which God created it.” (4) 


(4) This view is totally inconsistent with the favourite notion of certain mo- 
dern geologists of & primitive chaotic ocean, containing like that of the heathen 


FIRST.| THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. . 25) 


It will now be observed, that if such interpretations of the Mosaic 
account cannot be allowed, the decisions of Scripture and some of the 
modern speculations in geology, must be left directly to oppose each 
other, and that their hostility on this point cannot be softened by the 
advocates of accommodation. On this account no alarm need be felt 
‘yy the believer, “for there is no counsel against the Lord ;” and the 
progress of true philosophy will ever, in the result, add evidence to the 
t-uth of revelation. On the antiquity of the human race geology has 
been compelled already to give its testimony to the accuracy of Moses, 
and tne time is probably not far distant when a similar testimony will 
be educed from it, as to the antiquity of the globe. 

In what it now opposes that authority, it may serve to rebuke the 
dogmatism with which it has disputed the Scriptures, to observe, that, 
strictly speaking, the science itself is not yet half a century old, and is 
conversant, not with the surface of the earth only, but with its interior 
strata, which have been as yet but partially examined. It is therefore 
too early to theorize with ‘so much confidence ; and the eager manner 
in which its hasty speculations have been taken up against the Mosaic 
account, can only remind thinking men of the equally eager manner in 
which the chronologies of China and Hindostan, and the supposed 
zodiacs of Egyptian temples were once caught at, for the same reason, 
and we may justly fear from the same motives. It will, indeed, be time 
enough to enter into a formal defence of Moses, when geologists agree 
among themselves on leading principles. Cuvier gives rather an 
aiusing account of the odd and. contradictory speculations of his 
scientific brethren; (Theory, by Jamigson, page 41—47;) all of which 
he of course condemns, and fancies himself, as they all fancied them. 
selves before him, a successful theorist. ‘The vehemence with which 
the two great rival geological sects, the Neptunian and Plutonian, have 
disputed, to a degree almost unprecedented in the modern age of philo- 


poets, the elements of al] things; a notion which those who wish to reconcile 
the accuunt of Genesis with the modern geology have been willing to concede to 
tuem, on the ground that Moses has said that the earth was ‘* without form and 
void.” But they have not consiaered that it was ‘the earth,” not a liquid mass, 
which is thus characterized; circumfused with water, it is true, but not mingled 
with it. The LXX render the phrase yay in, tohu vabohu, woparos, Kat akaTaoKev 
aso;, invisible and unfurnished,—invisible both because of the darkness, and the 
watar which covered it, and unfurnished, because destitute as yet of vegetables 
and animals. ‘It is wonderful,” says Rosenmuller, ‘how so many interpreters 
could imagine that a chaos was described in the words way win, tohu vabohu. 
This notion unquestionably took its origin from the fictions of the Greek and 
Latin poets, which were transferred, by those interpreters, to Moses.” Those 
fictions ground themselves, we may add, upon traditions received from the earli- 
est times; but the additions of poetic fancy are not to be applied to interpret the 
Scriptures. 


252 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, [PART 


sophy, adds but little authority to the decisions of either, thasmuch as 
the contest is grounded upon an assumed knowledge of facts, and there- 
fore shows that the facts themselves are but indistinctly apprehended in 
their relations to each other, and that the collection of phenomena on 
both sides still need to be arranged and systematized, under the euidance 
of some calm, and modest, and master mind. (5) 

In all these speculations it is observable, that it is assumed at once 
that philosophy and the Mosaic account are incompatible, and generally 
without any pains having been taken to understand that account ‘itself. 
Yet as that account professes to be from one who was both the author 
and the zztness of the phenomena in question, it might have been sup- 
posed that the aid of testimony would have been gladly brought to 
induction. An able work has been recently published on this subject 
by Mr. Granville Penn, who has at once reproved the bold philosophy 
which excludes the operation of God, and employs itself only among 
second rauses ; and has unfolded the Mosaic account of two great reve- 
lutions of the earth, one of which took place when “the waters were 
gathered into one place,” and the other at the deluge, “when the 
fountains of the great deep were broken up,” (6) and has applied them 
to account for those phenomena which have been made to require a 
theory not to be reconciled with the sacred historian. (7) 


Voltaire objected to the philosophy of the Mosaic account, that it has” 


represented a solid firmament to have been formed, in which the stars 
are fixed as in a wall of adamant. ‘This objection-was made in igno- 


(5) Mons. L. A. Necker ve Saussure, (Voyage en Ecosse,) speaking of the 
‘isputes between tne Wernerians and Huttonians, says, ‘The former availed 
themselves of the ascendancy which a more minute study of minerals afforded, 
to depreciate the observations of their adversaries. They denied the existence 
of facts which the latter had discovered, or they tried to sink their importance 
Hence it happened that phenomena, important to the natural history of the earth, 
have never been made known and appreciated as they ought to have been, by 
geologists most capable of estimating their consequences.” 

(6) See note A at the end of the chapter. 

(7) A scientific journal of grest reputation, edited at the Royal Institution, has 
made an honourable disclaimer of those theories which contradict the Scriptures, 
and speaks in commendation of the work of Mr. Penn: ‘* We are not inclined, 
yven if we had time, to enter into the comparative merits of the fire and water 
fancies, miscalled theories; but we have certain old-fashioned prejudices, which 
in these enlightened days of skepticism and infidelity, will no doubt be set down 
as mightily ridiculous, but which, nevertheless, induce us to pause before we 
acquiesce either in the one or the other. There is another mode of accounting 
for the present state of the earth’s structure, on principles at least as ratiunal, in 
a philosophical light, as either the Plutonian or Neptunian; and inasmneh as it 
is more consistent with, and founded on, sacred history, incomparahly superier, 


(See Mr. Granvitte Penn’s Comparative Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaical 
Geolugies.” 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, 258 


tance of the import of the original word rendered firmamentum ly the 
Vulgate, and which signifies an expanse, referring evidently to the 
atmospl ere. The Septuagint seems to have rendered y\pr, by sepéee, 
which signifies a firm support, with reference to the office of the atmos. 
phere, to keep up, as effectually as by some solid support, the waters 
contained in the clouds. The account of Moses is philosophically true - 
the expandea o1 diffused atmosphere “divides the waters from tne 
waters,” the waters in the clouds from the waters of the earth and 
sea ; and the objection only shows ignorance of the original language, 
or inattention to it. 

It is more difficult to explain that part of the Mosaic relation which 
represents light as created on the first day, ‘and the sun not until the 
fourth ; it would b2 wearisome to give the various solutions which have 
been offered. One of the most recent, that which supposes the creation 
of latent heat and light to be spoken of, cannot certainly be maintained ; 
for the light which on the first day obeyed the sublime fiat, was not 
latent, but in a state of excitement, and collected itself into a body suff- 
cient to produce the distinction between day and night, which, had it 
been either in a latent state, or every where diffused in an excited form, 
could not have been effected. The difficulty, however, so far from 
discrediting the Mosaic account, affords it a striking confirmation. Had 
it been compiled under popular notions, it never could have entered the 
mind of man, drawing all his philosophy from the optical appearances 
of nature only, that light, sufficient to form the distinction between day 
and night, should have been created independent of the sun; and the 
conclusion therefore is, that the account was received either from inspi- 
ration, or from a tradition pure from its original fountain, and which 
had flowed on to the time of Moses, unmixed with popular corruptions. 

“Sir William Herschel,” says Mr. Granville Penn, “has discovered 
that the body of the sun is an opaque substance ; and that the splendid 
matter which dispenses to the world ight and heat, is a luminous atmos- 
phere, (Phil. Trans. for 1795, p. 46; and for 1801, p. 265,) attached 
to its surface, figuratively, though not physically, as flame is attached to 
the wick of a Jamp or a torch. So that the creation of the sun, as a 
part of ‘the host of heaven,’ does not necessarily imply the creation of 
light ; and, conversely, the creation of light does not necessarily imply 
the creation of the body of the sun. In the first creation of ‘the heaven 
ani the earth, therefore, not the planetary orbs only, but the solar orb 
itself, was created in darkness ; awaiting the light, which, by one simple 
Divine operation, was to be communicated at once to all. When then 
the almighty Word, in commanding ght, commanded the first i/lumina.- 
tion of the solar atmosphere, its new light was immediately caught, and re- 
flected throughout space, by all the members of the planetary system. And 
well may we imagine, that, in that first, sudden, and magnificent illumi. 


254 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. © TRARS 


nation of the universe, ‘the morning stars sang together and the sons of 
God shouted for joy,” Job xxxviii, 7. . 

But if the discovery of Herschel be real, the passage just quoted 
supposes the sular orb to have been invested with its luminous atmos- 
phere on the first day, and the difficulty in question still remains 
untouched, though. it admirably explains how “the heavens,” that 1s, 
our solar system, should ve created by one act, and yet that it should 
require a second fiat to invest then with ight. Another way of meet- 
ing the difficulty is, that the lights which are said to have been made on 
the fourth day, were not on that day actually created, but determined to 
certain uses. Thus Rosenmuller: “If any one who is conversant with 
the genius of the Hebrew, and free from any previous bias of his judg- 
‘neat, will read the words of this article in their natural connection, he 
will immediately perceive that they import the direction or determination 
of the heavenly bodies to c. rtain uses which they were to supply to the earth. 
The words nix ‘7 are not to be separated from the rest, or to be ren 
dered fiant luminar a,—let there be lights ; that is, let lghts be made ; 
but rather, let lights be, that is, serve in the expanse of heaven—inserviant 
in expanso celorum—for distinguishing between day and night; and let 
them be, or serve, for signs, dc. For we are to observe, that the verb 
mn to be, in construction with the prefix 5, for, is generally employed 
to express the direction or determinationof a thing to an end; and not 
the production of the thing: e. g. Num. x, 31; Zech. viii, 19, and in 
many other places.” 

To this there is an obvious objection, that it does not assign any work, 
properly speaking, to the fourth day ; and how, when neither bezng was 
on that day given to them, nor any change effected in their qualities or 
relations, the lights could be determined to certain uses except by giving 
information of their uses to men, cannot be conceived ; and as yet man 
was not created. Mr. Penn indeed supposes that the heavenly bodies 
had been hid from the earth till the fourth day by vapours; that then 
they were for the first time dispelled ; and, as he eloquently says, “ the 
amazing calendar of the heavens, ordained to serve for the notation of 
time in all human concerns, civil and religious, so long as time and 
man should continue, was therefore to be now first unfolded to the 
earth, with all the visible indices of time by which its measures were 
‘hereafter to be marked, distinguished, and computed ; and the splendid 
cause, which had hitherto issued its effect of light through an interposed 
medium, was to dispense that light to the earth immediately, in the full 
manifestation of its effulgence.” 

The notion, that the earth was from the first to the fourth day enveloped 
with vapour, so that, as in a fog, the distinction of day and night was 
manifest, though the celestial orbs were not visible, is however assumed, 
and dves not appear quite pnilosophical and though the dispersion of 


FIRST, ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, QA 


these vapours from the atmosphere assigns a work to the fourth day, it 
scarcely appears to be of sufficient importance to accord with the language 
of the history. It would be better to suppose with others, that on the 
fourth day the annual motion of the earth commenced, which till then 
merely turned upon its axis, and with it the annual motion of the moon 
ard planets in their orbits,—that wonderfully rapid and yet regular flight 
of the heavenly bodies which so awfully displays the power of the great 
Artificer in communicating, and constantly feeding, the mighty impulse, 
and which is so essential to the measurement of time, that without it the 
* Lights” could not be, or serve, “for signs and for seasons,” and “ for” 
solemn “ days,” religious festivals, and the commemoration of important 
events, and “ for years.” A sublime work is thus assigned to the fourth 
day, and the difficulty seems mainly to be removed: but whether some 
violence is not done to the letter of the account, may still be doubted ; 
and the difficulty which proves, as we have seen, if admitted in its full 
force, more for the Mosaic relation than against it, had better be retained 
than one iota of the strict grammatical and contextual meaning of Scrip- 
ture be suffered to pass away. 

Several objections have been made at different times to the Mosaic 
account of the deluge. The fact however is not only preserved in the 
traditions of all nations, as we have already seen; but after all the phi- 
losophical arguments which were formerly urged against it, philosophy 
has at length acknowledged that the present surface of the earth must 
have been submerged under water. “Not only,” says Kirwan, “in 
every region of Europe, but also of both the old and new continents, 
immense quantities of marine shells, either dispersed or collected, have 
been discovered.” This and several other facts seem to prove, that at 
least a great part of the present earth was, before the last general con- 
vulsion to which it has been subjected, the bed of an ocean which, at 
that time, was withdrawn from it. Other facts seem also to prove with 
sufficient evidence, that this was not a gradual retirement of the waters 
which once covered the parts now inhabited by men; but a- violent one, 
such as may be supposed from the brief, but emphatic relation of Moses. 
The violent action of water has left its traces in various undisputed phe- 
nomena. ‘Stratified mountains of various heights exist in different 
parts of Europe, and of both continents, in and between whose strata 
various substances of marine, and some vegetables of terrestrial origin 
repose either in their natural state, or petrified.” (Kirwan’s Geological 
Essays.) “'To overspread the plains of the arctic circle with the shells 
of Indian seas, and with the bodies of elephants and rhinoceri, surrounded 
by masses of submarine vegetation ; to accumulate on a single spot, as 
at La Bolca, in promiscuous confusion, the marine productions of the four 
quarters of the globe ; what conceivable instrument would be efficacious 
but the rush of mighty waters?” (GisBorNE’s “ Testimony of Natural 


256 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. {PART 


Theology,” &c.) These facts, about which there is no dispute, and 
which are acknowledged by the advocates of each of the prevailing 
geological theories, give a sufficient attestation to the deluge of Noah, 
in which “the fountains of the great deep were broken up,” and frem 
which precisely such phenomena might be expected to follow. To this 
may be added, though less decisive in proof, yet certainly strong as 
presumptive evidence, that the very aspect of the earth’s surface exhihits 
interesting marks both of the violent action, and the rapid subsidet ce 
of waters; as well as affords a most interesting instance of the Divine 
goodness in converting what was ruzn itself, into utility, and beauty. 
The great frame work of the varied surface of the habitable earth was 
probably laid by a more powerful agency than that of water; eithe> 
when on the third day the waters under the heavens were gathered 
into one place, and the crust of the primitive earth was broken down to 
receive them, so that “the dry land might appear ;” or by those mighty 
convulsions which appear to have accompanied the general deluge ; but 
the rounding, so to speak, of what was rugged, where the substance 
was yielding, and the graceful undulations of hill and dale which so 
frequently present themselves, were probably effected by the retiring 
waters. The flood has passed away; but the soils which it deposited 
remain; and the valleys through which its last streams were drawn off 
to the ocean, with many an eddy and sinuous course, still exist, exhibit- 
ing visible proofs of its agency, and impressed with forms so adapted to 
the benefit of man, and often so gratifying to the finest taste, that when 
the flood “ turned,” it may be said to have “left a blessing behind it.” 

Thus the objections once made to the fact of a general deluge have 
been greatly weakened by the progress of philosophical knowledge ; and 
may indeed be regarded as nearly given up, like the former notion of 
the high antiquity of the race of men, founded on the Chinese and 
Egyptian chronologies and pretended histories. Philosophy has even at 
last found out that there is sufficient water in the ocean, if called forth, 
to overflow the highest mountains to the height given by Moses, a con- 
clusion which it once stoutly denied. Keill formerly computed that 
twenty-eight oceans would be necessary for that purpose, but we are now 
informed “that a farther progress in mathematical and physical know. 
ledge has shown the different seas and oceans to contain at least forty. 
eight times more water than they were then supposed to do; and that 
the mere raising of the temperature of the whole body of the ocean to 
a degree no greater than marine animals live in, in the shallow seas 
between the tropics, would so expand it as more than to produce the 
height above the mountains stated in the Mosaic account.” As to the 
deluge of Noah, therefore, infidelity has almost entirely lost the aid of 
philosophy in framing objections to the Scriptures. 

The dimensions of the ark, and the preservation of the animals con. 


FIRST. } THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. . 2Ot 


tained in it, are however still the subject of occasional ridicule, though 
with little foundation. Dr. Hales proves the ark te have been of the 
burthen of 42,413 tons, and asks, “ Can we doubt of its being sufficient 
lo contain eight persons, and about two hundred, or two hundred and 
fifty pair of four-footed animals,.(a number to which, according to M. 
Buffon, all the various distinct species may be reduced,) together with 
all the subsistence necessary for a twelvemonth, with the fowls of the 
air, and such reptiles and insects as cannot live under water? All 
these various animals were controlled by the power of God, whose 
special agency is supposed in the whole transaction, and ‘the lion was 
made to lie down with the kid.’” 

Whether Noah was commanded to bring with him, into the ark, a 
pair of all living creatures, zoologically and numerically considered, has 
been doubted ; and as during the long period between the creation and 
the flood, animals must have spread themselves over a great part of the 
antediluvian earth, and certain animals would, as now, probably become 
indigenous to certain climates, the pairs saved must in such cases have 
travelled from immense distances. Of such marches no intimation is 
given in the history ; and this seems to render it probable that the animals 
which Noah was “to bring with him” into the ark, were the animals, 
clean and unclean, of the country in which he dwelt, and which, from 
the evident capacity of the ark, must have been in great variety and 
number. The terms used, it is true, are universal; and it is satisfac- 
tory to know that if the largest sense of them be taken, there was ample 
accommodation in the ark. Nevertheless, universal terms in Scripture 
are not always to be taken mathematically ; and in the vision of Peter, 
the phrase wavra ra retparoda rng yng— all the four.footed beasts of 
the earth,” must be understood of “varii generis quadrupedes,” as 
Schleusner paraphrases it. In this case we may easily account for the 
exuvize of animals, whose species no longer exist, and which have been 
discovered in various places. The number of such extinct species has 
probably been greatly overrated by Cuvier; but of the fact to a con- 
siderable extent, there can be no doubt. It is also to be remarked, that 
we are not obliged to go to the limited interpretation of the command to 
Nvuah respecting the animals to be preserved in the ark, in order to 
account for this fact; for without adopting the totally unscriptural 
theory cf a former world; or of more general revolutions of the earth 
than the Seru~:ires state, (partial ones affecting large districts may have 
vaken place,) we know of no principle in the word of God which should 
ead us to conclude, that all the animals which God at first created 
should be preserved to the end of time. In many countries whole species 
of wild animals have perished by the prugress of cultivation, a process 
which must ultimately produce the utter extinction of the same species 


every where. The offices which many other creatures were designed to 
Vor. I. 17 


258 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, ~ {PARI 


fulfil im the econonty of nature, may have terminated with the new cir- 
cumstances in which the parts they have chiefly inhabited are placed. 
So it might be before the flood, and in many places since. Thus then 
the exuviz of extinct species may be expected to present themselves. 
But in addition to this, if we suppose that during the antediluvian period, 
animals of various kinds had located themselves in different portions of 
the ocean, and in different climates of the primitive earth; and that, of 
the terrestrial animals become indigenous to parts of the earth distant from 
Noah and the inhabited world, some species were not received into the 
ark, their remains will also occasionally be discovered, and present the 
proof of modes of animated existence not now to be paralleled. Among 
fossil remains it has been made a matter of surprise that no human 
skeletons, or but few, and those in recent formations, have been found. 
The reason however is not difficult to furnish. If we admit that the 
present continents were the bottom of the antediluvian ocean, and that. 
the ocean has changed its place ; then the former habitations of men are 
submerged, and their remains are beyond human reach. If any part 
of the antediluvian earth still remains, it is probably that region to which 
Noah and his family were restored from the ark ; and in those countries, 
geology has not commenced its znferior researches, and such fossil 
remains may there exist. ‘There is this difference between the human 
race and the inferior animals, that while the latter for near two thousand 
years were roaming over the wide earth, the former confined themselves 
to one region; for those extravagant calculations as to the population 
of the earth at the time of the flood, which some have made, cannot be 
maintained on the authority of Scripture, on which they professedly 
rest; since it is certain that they represent Noah as a preacher of 
righteousness to the whole existing “ world” of men, during the time the 
ark was preparing, one hundred and twenty years. The human race 
must therefore have lived, however populous, in the same region, and 
been either in personal communication with him, or within reach of the 
distinct report of his doctrines, and of that great and public act of his 
faith, the preparing of the ark, “ by the which he condemned the world, 
and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.” Even Cuvier 
gives itas a reason why human skeletons are not found in a fossil state, 
“that the place which men then inhabited may have sunk into the 
abyss, and that the bones of that destroyed race may yet remain buried 
under the bottom of some actual seas.” 


Such are the leading evidences of the truth of the Holv Scriptures, 
and of the religious system which they unfold. from the first promise 
made to the first fallen man, to its perfected exhibition in the New 
Testament. The Christian will review these solid and immovable 


FIRST. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 258 


foundations of his faith with unutterable joy. They leave noue of his 
moral interests unprovided for in time; they set before him a certain 
and a felicitous immortality. The skeptic and the infidel may be en- 
treated, by every compassionate feeling, to a more serious consideration 
of the evidences of this Divine system, and the difficulties and hopeless. 
ness of their own; and they ought to be reminded, in the words of a 
modern writer, “If Christianity be true, it is tremendously true.” Let 
them turn to an insulted, but yet a merciful Saviour, who even now 
prays for his blasphemers, in the words he once addressed to Heaven in 
behalf of his murderers, FATHER, FORGIVE THEM; FOR THEY KNOW 
NOT WHAT THEY DO! . 


Notre A.—Page 252. 


From the work referred to in the text, the following extracts will be read witn 
interest. 

Mr. Penn first controverts the notion of those geologists who think that che 
earth was originally a fluid mass ; and as they plead the authority of Sir I. New. 
ton, who is said to have concluded from its figure, (an obtuse spheroid,) that it 
was originally a yielding mass, Mr. Penn shows that this was only put hypothe. 
tically by him ; and that he has laid it down expressly as his belief, not that there 
was first a chaotic ocean, and then a gradual process of first formations, but that 
‘God at the beginning formed all material things of such figures and properties 
as most couduced to the end for which he formed them ;” and that he judged it 
to be unphilosophical to ascribe them to any mediate or secondary cause, such 
as laws of nature operating in a chaos. Mr. Penn then proceeds to show, that, 
though what geologists call first formations may have the appearance of having 
been produced by a process, say of crystalization, or any other, that is no proof 
that they were not formed by the immediate act of God, as we are taught in the 
Scriptures; and he confirms this by examples from the first formations in the 
animal and vegetavle kingdoms, and contends that the first formations of the 
mineral kingdom must come under the same rule. ‘“ If a bone of the first created 
man now remained, and were mingled with other bones pertaining to a generated 
qace; and if it were to be submitted to the inspection and examinatjon of an 
anatomist, what opinion and judgment would its sensible phenomena suggest, re- 
specting the mode of its first formation, and what would be his conclusion? If 
he were unapprized of its true origin, his mind would see nothing in its sensible 
phenomena but the laws of ossification; just as the mineral geology ‘ sees nothing 
in the details of the formation of minerals, but precipitations, crystalizations, 
and dissolutions.’ (D’ Aubuisson, i, pp. 326-7.) He would therefore naturally 
pronounce of this bone, as of all the other bones, that its ‘ fibres were originally 
soft’ until, in the shelter of the maternal womb, it acquired ‘ the hardness of a 
sartuage, and then of bone,’ that this effect ‘was not produced at once, or in a 
very short time,’ but ‘by degrees,’ that, after birth, it increased in hardness ‘ by 
the continual addition of ossifying matter, until it ceased to grow at all.’ 

‘* Physically true as this reasoning would appear, it would nevertheless be mo- 
rally and really false. Why would it be false? Because it concluded, from merg 
sensible phenomena, to the certainty of a fact which could not be established by 
che evidence of sensible phenomena alone; namely, the mode of the first forma - 
ion of the substance of created bone. 


260 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. ' [PART 


“Let us proceed from animal ta vegetable matter ; and let us consider the first 
created tree, under which the created man.first reposed, and from which he ga- 
thered his first fruit. That tree must have had a stem, or trunk, through which 
the juices were conveyed from the root to the fruit, and by which it was able to 
sustain the branches upon which the fruit grew. 

“Ifa portion of this created tree now remained, and if a section of its wood 
were to be mingled with other sections of propagated trees, and submitted to the 
inspection and examination of a naturalist; what opinion and judgment would 
its sensible phenomena suggest to him, respecting the mode of its first formation ; 
and what would be his conclusion? If he were unapprized of its true origin. 
his mind would see nothing in its sensible phenomena, but the laws of lignifi- 
cation ; just as the mineral geologist ‘ sees nothing in the details of the formations 
of primitive rock, but precipitations, crystalizations, and dissolutions.’ He would 
therefore naturally pronounce of it as of all the other sections of wood: that its 
‘ fibres,’ when they first issued from the seed, ‘ were soft and herbaceous ;’ that 
they ‘did not suddenly pass- to the hardness of perfect wood,’ but, ‘after many 
years ;’ that the hardness of their folds, ‘ which indicate the growth of each year,’ 
was therefore effected only ‘by degrees ; and that, ‘since nature does nothing 
tut by a progressive course, it is not surprising that its substance acquired its 
hardness only by little and little, 

‘* Physically true as the naturalist would here appear to reason; yet his rea- 
soning, like that of the anatomist, would be morally and really false. And why 
would it be false? For the same reason; because he concluded from mere sen- 
sible phenomena, to the certainty of a fact which could not be established by the 
evidence of sensible phenomena alone; namely, the mode of the first formation 
of the substance of created wood. 

‘* There only now remains to be considered, the third, or mineral kingdom of 
this terrestrial system; and it appears probable, to reason and philosophy, by 
prima facie evidence, that the principle determining the mode of first formations, 
in two parts of this three-fold division of matter, must have equal authority in 
this third part. And indeed, after the closest investigation of the subject, we can _ 
discover no ground whatever for supposing that this third part is exempted from 
the authority of that common principle ; or that physics are a whit more compe- 
tent to dogmatize concerning the mode of first formations, from the evidence of 
phenomena alone, in the mineral kingdom, than they have been found to be in 
the animal or vegetable; or to affirm, from the indications of the former, that the 
mode of its first formations was more gradual and tardy than those of the othe 
two. 

“Let us try this point, by proceeding with our comparison; and let us con- 
sider the first created rock, as we have-considered the first created hone and 
wood; and let us ask, what is rock, in its nature and composition ? 

“To this question, mineralogy replies: ‘By the word rock, we mean every 
mineral mass of such bulk as to be regarded’an essential part of the structure of 
the globe. (D’ Aubuisson, i, p.272.) We understand by the word mineral, a natural 
body; inerganic, solid, homogeneous, that is, composed of integrant molecules 
of the same substance. (D’ Aubuisson, i, p.271.) We may, perhaps, pronounce that 
amass is essential, when its displacement would occasion the downfall of other 
masses which are placed upon it. (D’ Aubuisson, i, p. 272.) Such are those lofty 
and ancient mountains, the first and most solid bones, as it were, of this globe,—les 
premers, les plus solides ossemens,—which have merited the name of primitive, 
secause, scorning all support and all foreign mixture, they repose always upon 
bases similar to themselves, and comprise withi» their substance no matter but 


¢IRST.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES 261 


of the same nature. (Saussure, Voyages des Alps, Disc. Prél. pp. 6, 7.) These 
are the primordial mountains; which traverse our continents in various direc. 
tions, rising above the clouds, separating the basins of rivers one from another ; 
serving, by means of their eternal snows, as reservoirs for feeding the springs, 
and forming in some measure the skeleton, or, as it were, the rough frame work 
of the earth. (Cuvier, sec. 7, p. 39.) These primitive masses are stamped with 
the character of a formation altogether crystaline, as if they were really the pro 
duct of a tranquil precipitation.” (D’Aubuisson, ii, p. 5.) 

‘‘ Had the mineral geology contented itself with this simple mineralogical 
etatement, we should have thus argued concerning the crystaline phenomena of 
the first mineral formations; conformably to the principles which we have re- 
cognized. As the bone of the first man, and the wood of the first tree, whose 
solidity was essential for ‘giving shape, firmness, and support,’ to their respec. 
tive systems, were not, and could not have been, formed by the gradual processes 
of ossification and lignification, of which they nevertheless must have exhibited 
the sensible phenomena, or apparent indications; so, reason directs us to con- 
clude, that primitive rock, whose solidity was equally essential for giving shape, 
firmness, and support to the mineral system of this globe, was not, and could not 
have been, formed by the gradual process of precipitation and crystalization, note 
withstanding any sensible phenomena, apparently indicative of those processes, 
which it may exhibit; but that in the mineral kingdom, as in the animal and 
vegetable kingdoms, the creating agent anticipated in his formations, by an im. 
mediate act, effects, whose sensible phenomena could not determine the mode of 
their formation; because the real mode was in direct contradiction to the appa. 
rent indications of the phenomena. 

‘* But the mineral geology las not contented itself with that simple mineralo 
gical statement ; nor drawn the conclusion which we have drawn, in conformity 
with the principles, and in ooservance of the rules, of Newton’s philosophy. It 
affirms, ‘that the characters by which geology is written in the book of nature 
in which it is to be studied, are minerals; (D’ Aubuisson, Disc. Prél. p.29;) ana 
it ‘ sees nothing’ in that book of nature but ‘ precipitations, crystalizations, and 
dissolutions ;?) and therefore, because it sees nothing else, it concludes without 
hesitation, from crystaline phenomena to actual crystalization. Thus, by at- 
tempting the impossibility of deducing a universal principle, viz. the mode of first 
formations, from the analysis of a single individual, viz. mineral matter, separate 
from co-ordinate animal and vegetable matter ; and concluding from that defec. 
tive analysis, to the general law of first formations; it set out with inadequate 
light, and it is no wonder that it ended in absolute darkness ; for such is its ele. 
mental chaos, and its chemical precipitation of this globe: a doctrine so nearly 
resembling the exploded atomic philosophy of the Epicurean school, that it re. 
quires a very close and laborious inspection to discover a single feature, by 
which they may be distinguished from each other.” 

This argument is largely supported and illustrated in the work ; and thus by 
referring first formations of every kind to an immediate act of God, those im- 
mense periods of time which geology demands for its chemical processes, are 
rendered unnecessary. From first formations, Mr. Penn proceeds to oppose the 
notion that the earth has undergone many general revolutions, and thinks that 
all geological phenomena may be better explained by the Mosaic record, which 
confines those general revolutions to two. Mr. Penn’s course of observation 
will be seen by the following recapitulation of the second and third parts of his- 
work :— 

‘¢ That this globe, so constructed at its origin, has undergone two, and only two, 


26:2 THEOLOGICA™\, INSTITUTES. 


general changes or revolutions of its substance ; each of which was caused by 
the immediate will, intelligence, and power of Gop, exercised upon the work 
which he had formed, and directing the laws or agencies which he had ordained 
within it. 

‘« That, by the rmsr change or revolution, |that of gathering the waters into 
one piace, and making the dry land appear,] one portion or-division of the sur- 
face of the globe was suddenly and violently fractured and depressed, in order ts 
form, in the first instance, a receptacle or bed for the waters universally diffused 
over that surface, and to expose the other portion, that it might become a dwell. 
ing for animal life; but yet, with an ulterior design, that the receptacle of the 
waters should eventually become the chief theatre of animal existence, by the 
portion first exposed experiencing a similar fracture and depression, and thus 
becoming in its turn, the receptacle of the same waters; which should then be 
transfused into it, leaving their former receptacle void and dry. 

‘That this rirst revolution took place before the existence, that is, before the 
creation of any organized beings. 

‘That the sea, collected into this vast fractured cavity of the globe’s surface, 
continued to occupy it during 1656 years [from the creation to the deluge ;} dur- 
ing which long period of time, its waters acted in various modes, chemical and 
mechanical, upon the several soils and fragments which formed its bed ; and ma- 
rine organic matter, animal and vegetable, was generated and accumulated in 
vast abundance. 

“That, after the expiration of those 1656 years, it pleased God, in a seconp 
revolution, to execute his ulterior design, by repeating the amazing operation by 
which he had exposed the first earth ; and by the disruption and depression of 
that first earth below the level of the bed of the first sea, to produce a new bed, 
into which the waters descended from their former bed, leaving it to become the 
theatre of the future generations of mankind. 

‘“That THIS PRESENT EARTH WS THAT FORMER BED. 

“ That it must, therefore, necessarily exhibit manifest and universal evidences 
of the vicissitudes which it has undergone; viz. of the vast apparent ruin occa- 
sioned by its first violent disruption and depression ; of the presence and opera- 
tion of the marine fluid during the long interval which succeeded ; and, of the 
action and effects of that fluid in its ultimate retreat. 

‘* Within the limits of this general scheme, all speculations must be confined 
which would aspire to the quality of sound geology; yet vast and sublime is the 
field which it lays open, to exercise the intelligence and experience of sober and 
philosophical mineralogy and chemistry. Upon this legitimate ground, those 
many valuable writers, who have unwarily lent their science to uphold and pro- 
pagate the vicious doctrine of a chaotic geogony, may geologize with full secu. 
rity; and may there concur to promote that true advancement of natural 
philosophy, which Newton holds to be inseparable from a proportionate adyance. 
nunt of the moral. They must thus at length succeed in perfecting a tru 
prilosophical geology ; which never can exist, unless the principle of Newton 
form the foundation, and the relation of Moses the working plan.” 


PART SECOND. 


DOCTRINES OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 


CHAPTER I. 
Tue ExisTENCcCE or Gop. 


Tue Divine authority of those writings which are received by Chris. 
tians as a revelation of infallible truth, having been established, our next 
step is seriously, and with simplicity of mind, to examine their contents, 
and to collect from them that ample information on religious and moral 
subjects which they profess to contain, and in which it had become 
necessary that the world should be supernaturally instructed. Agreeably 
to a principle which has already been laid down, I shall endeavour, as 
in the case of any other record, to exhibit their meaning by the applica- 
tion of those plain rules of interpretation which have been established 
for such purposes by the common agreement of the sober part of man- 
kind. All the assistance within reach from critics, commentators, and 
divines, shall however be resorted to; for, though the water can only 
be drawn pure from the sacred fountain itself, we yet owe it to many 
of these guides, that they have successfully directed us to the openings 
hrough which it breaks, and led the way into the depth of the stream. 

The doctrine which the first sentence in this Divine revelation unfolds 
is, that there ts a Gop, the Creator of heaven and earth ; and as this 
is fundamental to the whole scheme of duty, promise, and hope, which 
the books of Scripture successively unfold and explain, it demands our 
earliest consideration. 

In three distinct ways do the sacred writers furnish us with informa- 
tion on this great and essential subject, the existence and the character 
of God ;—from the names by which he is designated ; from the actions 
ascribed to him; and from the attributes with which he is invested in 
their invocations and praises; and in those lofty descriptions of his , 
nature which, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have record. 
ed for the instruction of the world. These attributes will be afterward 
particularly considered; but the impression of the general view of the 
Divine character, as thus revealed, is too important to be omitted. 

The names of God as recorded in Scripture, convey at once ideas of 
overwhelming greatness and glory, mingled with that awful mysterious. 
ness with which, to all finite minds, and especially to the minds of 
mortals, the Divine essence and mode of existence must ever be invest. 
td. Though Ons, he is onbx, ELonim, Geops, persons adorable. He 


264 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES [PART 


is mn» Jenovan, self existing, 5x, Ex, strong, powerful ; 77x, Enron, 
Tam, I will be, self existence, independency, all-sufficiency, immutability, 
eternity ; ‘w, Suavvat, almighty, all-sufficient ; }1~, Avon, Supporter, 
Lord, Judge. These are among the adorable appellatives of God which 
are scattered throughout the revelation which he has been pleased to 
make of himself: but on one occasion he was pleased more particularly 
to declare “his name,” that is, such of the qualities and attributes of the 
Divine nature, as mortals are the most interested in knowing ; and to 
unfold, not only his natural, but those also of his moral attributes by 
which his conduct toward his creatures is regulated. ‘ And the Lord 
passed by and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gra- 
cious, long suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy 
for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and that will 
by no means clear the guilty ; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon 
the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and fourth 
generation,’ Exod. xxxiv. ‘This is the most ample and particular de- 
scription of the character of God, as given by himself in the sacred 
records; and the import of the several titles by which he has thus in 
his infinite condescension manifested himself, has been thus exhibited. 
He is not only Jenovan, self existent, and Ex, the strong or mighty 
God ; but “pin>, Rocuum, the merciful being, who is full of tenderness 
and compassion. wn, Cuanoun, the gracious one, he whose nature is 
goodness itself—the loving God. o'ax Jax» Erec Apayim, long suffer. 
ing, the being who, because of his tenderness, is not easily irritated, but 
suffers long and is kind. 35, Ras, the great or mighty one. ‘\0n; 
Cuesep, the bountiful Being ; he who is exuberant in his beneficence. 
nox, Emern, the truth, or true one, he alone who can neither deceive 
nor be deceived. on 1x3, Norser Cuesep, the preserver of bounti- 
fulness, he whose beneficence never ends, keeping mercy for thousands 
of generations, showing compassion and mercy while the world endures. 
TANOM PLD py Nw Nose avon vapeshd vechataah, he who bears away 
iniquity, transgression and sin ; properly the RepEEMER, the PARDONER 
the Foreiver, the Being whose prerogative it is to forgive sin, and save 
the soul. px xd mpi, Naxeu lo yinnakeh, the righteous Judge, who 
distributes justice with an impartial hand. And 1y pa, Pakep, davon, 
Gc, he who visits iniquity, he who punishes transgressors, and from 
whose justice no sinner can escape: the God of retributive and vindic. 
live justice.” (Dr. A. Clarke in loc.) 

The second means by which the Scriptures convey to us the know- 
ledge of God, is by the actions which they ascribe to him. They con 
tain indeed the important record of his dealings with men in every age 
which is comprehended within the limit of the sacred history ; and, by 
prophetic declaration, they also exhibit the principles on which he will 
govern the world to the end of time; so that the whole course of 


SECOND. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 265 


she Divine administration may be considered as exhibiting a singularly 
illustrative comment upon those attributes of his nature, which, in their 
abstract form, are contained in such declarations as those which have 
been just quoted. The first act ascribed to God is that of creating the 
heavens and the earth out of nothing; and by his fiat alone arranging 
their purts, and peopling them with living creatures. By this were 
manifested—his eternity and self existence, as he who creates must be 
before all creatures, and he who gives being to others can himself de- 
rive it from none; his almighty power, shown both in the act of crea. 
tion, and in the number and vastness of the objects so produced : 
his wisdom, in their arrangement, and in their fitness to their respective 
ends: and his goodness as the whole tended to the happiness of sentient 
beings. The foundations of his natural and moral government are also 
made manifest by his creative acts. In what he made out of nothing 
he had an absolute right and prerogative of ordering and disposal] ; so 
that to alter or destroy his own work, and to prescribe the laws by which 
the intelligent and rational part of his creatures should be governed, are 
rights which none can question. Thus on the one hand his character 
of Lord or Governor is established, and on the other our duty of lowly 
homage and absolute obedience. 

Agreeably to this, as soon as man was created, he was placed under 
a rule of conduct. Obedience was to be followed with the continuance 
of the Divine favour ; transgression, with death. The event called forth 
uew manifestations of the character of God. His tender mercy, in the 
compassion showed to the fallen pair; his susrice, in forgiving them 
only in the view of a satisfaction to be hereafter offered to his justice by 
an innocent representative of the sinning race; his Love to that race, 
in giving his own Son to become this Redeemer, and in the fulness of 
time to die for the sins of the whole world ; and his Ho1rNsss, in con- 
necting with this provision for the pardon of man the means of restoring 
him to a sinless state, and to the obliterated image of God in which he 
had been created. Exemplifications of the Divine mercy are traced 
from age to age, in his establishing his own worship among men, and 
remitting the punishment of individual and national offences in answer 
to prayer offered from penitent hearts, and in dependence upon the 
typified or actually offered universal sacrifice :—of his conpESCENSION, in 
stooping to the cases of individuals; in his dispensations both of provi 
dence and grace, by showing respect to the poor and humble; and, 
principally, by the incarnation of God in the form of a servant, admit- 
ting men into familiar and friendly intercourse with himself, and then 
entering into heaven to be their patron and advocate, until they should 
be received unto the same glory, ‘and so be for ever with the Lord :”— 
of his strictly RIGHTEOUS GOVERNMENT, in the destruction of the old 
world. the cities of the plain, the nations of Canaan, and all ancient 


- 


266 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


states, upon their “ filling up the measure of their iniquities ;” and, to 


show that “he will by no means clear the guilty ;” in the numerous and 
severe punishments inflicted even upon the chosen seed of Abraham, 
because of their transgressions :—of his LONG sUFFERING, in frequent 
warnings, delays, and corrective judgments, inflicted upon individuals 
and naiions, before sentence of utter excision and destruction :—of 
FAITHFULNEss and TRUTH, in the fulfilment of promises, often many ages 
after they were given, as in the promises to Abraham respecting the 
possession of the land of Canaan by his seed ; and in all the ‘ promises 
made to the fathers” respecting the advent, vicarious death, and illustrious 
offices of the Christ, the Saviour of the world :—of his itmuTABILI7Y, 
in the constant and unchanging laws and principles of his government, 
which remain to this day precisely the same, in every thing universal, 
as when first promulgated, and have been the rule of his conduct in all 
places as well as through all time :—of his prescrence of future events, 
manifested by the predictions of Scripture ; and of the depth and sta- 
bility of his counssrt, as illustrated in that plan and purpose of bringing 
back a revolted world to obedience and felicity, which we find steadily 
kept in view in the Scriptural history of the acts of God in former ages - 
which is still the end toward which all his dispensations bend, however 
wide and mysterious their sweep; and which they will finally accom- 
plish, as we learn from the prophetic history of the future, contained in 
the Old and New Testaments. 

Thus the course of Divine operation in the world has from age to age 
been a manifestation of the Divine character, continually receiving new 
and stronger illustrations to the completion of the Christian revelation 
by the ministry of Christ and his inspired followers, and still placing 
itself in brighter light and more impressive aspects as the scheme of 
human redemption runs on to its consummation. From all the acts of 
God as recorded in the Scriptures, we are taught that he alone is God ; 
that he is present every where to sustain and govern all things; that his 
wisdom is infinite, his counsel settled, and his power irresistible ; that 
he is holy, just, and good; the Lord and the Judge, but the Father and 
the Friend of man. 

More at large do we learn what God is, from the declarations of the 
inspired writings. 

As to his sussTancr, that “ God is a Spirit.” As to his puRATION, 
that “ from everlasting to everlasting he is God ;” “the King, eternal, 
immortal, invisible.” That, after all the manifestations he has made of 
himself, he is from the infinite perfection and glory of his nature, rncom 
PREHENSIBLE ; ‘“ Lo, these are but parts of his ways, and how little a por- 
tion is heard of him!” “ Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out.” 
That he is UNCHANGEABLE, “the Father of Lights with whom there is no 
variableness, neither shadow of turning.” That “he is the fr untain of 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 267 


Lirx,” and the only independent Being in the universe, “who only hath 
immortality.” That every other being, however exalted, has its existence 
from him; “ for by him were all things created, which are in heaven and 
in earth, whether they are visible or invisible.” That the existence of 
every thing is upheld by him, no creature being for a moment inde- 
pendent of his support; “by him all things consist,” “upholding all 
things by the word of his power.” That he is omntpresENT: “ Do not 
[ fill heaven and earth with my presence, saith the Lord?” That he is 
omNiscreNT: “ All things are naked and open before the eyes of him 
with whom we have to do.” That he is the absolute Lorp 4nd owNER 
f all things: “ The heavens, even the heaven of heavens, are thine, and 
all the parts of them.” ‘The earth is thine, and the fulness thereof, 
the world and them that dwell therein.” “ He doeth according to his will 
in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.” That 
his PROVIDENCE extends tu the minutest objects: “ The hairs of your 
head are all numbered.” ‘“ Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing ? 
and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.” That 
he is a being of unspotted purrry and perfect recriruDE: “ Holy, holy, 
holy, Lord God of hosts!” “ A God of truth, and in whom is no iniquity.” 
“ Of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.” That he is susr in the adminis- 
tration of his government: “ Shall not the Judge of the whole earth do 
right?” ‘ Clouds and darkness are round about him ; judgment and jus- 
tice are the habitation of his throne.” 'That his wispom is unsearchable: 
“ O the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable 
ure his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” And, finally, that he 
is Goop and merciruL: “ Thou art good, and thy mercy endureth for 
ever.” ‘ His tender mercy is over all his works.” ‘God, who is rich 
in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were 
dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ.” “ God was in 
Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not amputing thetr trespasses 
unto them.” God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his 
Son.” . 

Under these deeply awful, but consolatory views, do the Scriptures 
present to us the supreme object of our worship and trust, dwelling upon 
each of the above particulars with inimitable sublimity and beauty of 
language, and with an inexhaustible variety of illustration ; nor can we 
compare these views of the Divine nature with the conceptions of the 
mst enlightened of pagans, without feeling how much reason we have 
for everiasting gratitude, that a revelation so explicit, and so compre. 
hensive, should have been made to us on a subject which only a revela- 
tion from God himself could have made known. — It is thus that Christian 
philosophers, even when they do not use the language of the Scrip'ures, 
are ‘able to speak on this great and mysterious doctrine in language so 
clear, and with conceptions so noble; in a manner too so equable, so 


268 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES |PART 


different to the sages of antiquity, who, if at any time they approach the 
truth, when speaking of the Divine nature, never fail to mingle with it 
some essentially erroneous or grovelling conception. “By the word 
Gop,” says Dr. Barrow, “ we mean a Being of infinite wisdom, good- 
ness, and power, the creator and the governor of all things, to whom the 
great attributes of eternity and independency, omniscience and immensity, 
perfect holiness and purity, perfect justice and veracity, complete hap- 
piness, glorious majesty, and supreme right of dominion, belong ; and tc 
whom the highest veneration, and most profound submission and obedi- 
ence, are due.” (Barrow on the Creed.) ‘ Our notion of Deity,” says 
Bishop Pearson, “doth expressly signify a Being or Nature of infinite 
perfection; and the infinite perfection of a Being or Nature consists in 
this, that it be absolutely and essentially necessary ; an actual Being of 
itself; and potential or causative of all beings beside itself, independent 
from any other, upon which all things else depend, and by which all 
things else are governed.” (Pearson on the Creed.) ‘God is a Being, 
and not any kind of being; but a swbstance, which is the foundation of 
other beings. And not only a substance, but perfect. Yet many beings 
are perfect in their kind, yet limited and finite. But God is absolutely, 
fully, and every way infinitely perfect ; and therefore above spirits, above 
angels who are perfect comparatively. God’s infinite perfection includes 
all the attributes, even the most excellent. It excludes all dependency, 
borrowed existence, composition, corruption, mortality, contingency, 
ignorance, unrighteousness, weakness, misery, and all imperfections 
whatever. It includes necessity of being, independency, perfect unity, 
simplicity, immensity, eternity, immortality ; the most perfect life, know- 
ledge, wisdom, integrity, power, glory, bliss, and all these in the highest 
degree. We cannot pierce into the secrets of this eternal Being. Our 
reason comprehends but little of him, and when it can proceed no farther, 
faith comes in, and we believe far more than we can understand: and 
this our belief is not contrary to reason; but reason itself dictates unto 
us that we must believe far more of God than it can inform us of.” 
(Lawson’s Theo-Politica.) 'To these we may add an admirable passage 
from Sir Isaac Newton: “ The word Gop frequently signifies Lord; but 
every lord is not God; it is the dominion of a spiritual Being or Lord, 
that constitutes God ; true dominion, true God; supreme, the supreme ; 
feigned, the false God. From such true dominion it follows that the 
true Goll is living, intelligent, and powerful ; and from his other perfec. 
tions that he is supreme, or supremely perfect ; he is eternal and infinite; 
omnipotent and omniscient ; that is, he endures from eternity to eternity ; 
and is present from infinity to infinity. He governs all thin.gs that exist, 
and knows all things that are to be known: he is not eternity or infinity 

but eternal and infinite ; he is not duration or space, but he endues and 
is present; he endures always, and is present every where ; he is omni 


SECOND. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 269 


present, not only virtually, but also substantially ; for power without sub. 
stance cannot subsist. All things are contained and move in him; but 
without any mutual passion; he suffers nothing from the motions of 
bodies ; nor do they undergo any resistance from his omnipresence. It 
is confessed that God exists necessarily, and by the same necessity he 
*xists always and every where. Hence also he must be perfectly simi- 
ar, all eye, all ear, all arm, all the power of perceiving, understanding, 
and acting ; but afier a manner not at all corporeal, after a manner not 
ike that of men, after a manner wholly to us unknown. He is destitute 
of all body, and all bodily shape; and therefore cannot be seen, heard, 
or touched ; nor ought he to be worshipped under the representation of 
any thing corporeal. We have ideas of the attributes of God, but do 
not know the substance of even any thing: we see only the figures and 
colours of bodies, hear only sounds, touch only the outward surfaces 
smell only odours, and taste tastes; and do not, cannot, by any sense, 
or reflex act, know their inward substances : and much less can we have 
any notion of the substance of God. We know him by his properties 
and attributes.” 

It is observable that neither Moses, the first of the inspired penmen, 
nor any of the authors of the succeeding canonical books, enters into 
any proof of this first principle of religion, that there isa Gop. They 
all assume it as a truth commonly known and admitted. There is indeed 
in the sacred volume no allusion to the existence of Atheistical senti- 
ments, till some ages after Moses, and then it is not quite clear whethe 
speculative or practical Atheism be spoken of. From this circumstance 
we learn that, previous to the time of Moses, the idea of one supreme 
and infinitely perfect God was familiar to men; that it had descended 
to them from the earliest ages; and also that it was a truth of original 
revelation, and not one which the sages of preceding times had wrought 
out by rational investigation and deduction. Had that been the fact, 
we might have expected some intimation of it: and that if those views 
of God which are found in the Pentateuch, were discovered by the suc. 
cessive investigations of wise men among the ancients, the progress of 
this wonderful discovery would have been marked by Moses; or if one 
only had demonstrated this truth by his personal researches, that some 
grateful mention of so great a sage, of so celebrated a moral teacher, 
would have been made. A truth too so essential to the whole Mosaic 
syatem, and upon which his own official authority rested, had it originated 
from successful human investigation, would seem naturally to have re. 
quired a statement of the arguments by which it had been demonstrated, 
as a fit introduction to a book in which he professed to record revela- 
tions received from this newly discovered being, and to enforce laws 
uttered under his command. Nothing of this kind is attempted; and 
the sacred historian and lawgiver proceeds at once to uarrate the acts 


270 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


of Gop and to declare his will. The history which he wrote, however, 
affords the reason why the introduction. of formal proof of the existence 
of one true God was thought unnecessary. The first man, we are !n- 
formed, knew God, not only from his works, but by sensible manifesta. _ 
tion and converse; the same Divine appearances were made to Noah, 
to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob; and when Moses wrote, persons were 
still living who had conversed with those who conversed with God 
gr were descended from the same families to whom God “at sundry 
times’ had appeared in visible glory, or in angelic forms. These Divine 
manifestations were also.matters of public notoriety among the primitive 
families of mankind; from them the tradition was transmitted to their 
descendants ; and the idea once communicated, was confirmed by every 
natural object which they saw around them. ~It continued even after 
the introduction of idolatry; and has never,.except among the most 
ignorant of the heathen, been to this day obliterated by polytheistic 
superstitions. It was thus that the knowledge of God was communicated 
to the ancient world. No discovery of this truth, either in the time of 
Moses, or in any former age, was made by human research; neither 
the date nor the process of it could therefore be stated in his writings ; 
and it would have been trifling to moot a question which had been sc 
fully determined, and to attempt to prove a doctrine universally received. 
That the idea of a supreme First Cause was at first obtained by the 
exercise of reason, is thus contradicted by the facts, that the first man 
received the knowledge of God by sensible converse with him, and that 
this doctrine was transmitted, with the confirmation of successive visible 
manifestations, to the early ancestors of all nations. Whether the dis- 
covery, therefore, of the simple truth of the existence of a First Cause 
be within the compass of human powers, is a point which cannot be de- 
termined by matter of fact; because it may be proved that those nations 
by whom that doctrine has been acknowledged, had their origin from a 
common stock, resident in that part of the world in which the primitive 
revelations were given. They were therefore never in circumstances 
in which such an experiment upon the power or weakness of the human 
mind could be made. Among some uncivilized tribes, such as the Hot. 
tentots of Africa, and the aborigines of New South Wales, the idea of a 
Supreme Being is probably entirely obliterated ; some notions of spiritual 
existences, superior in power to man, and possessed of creative and de- 
structive powers, do however remain, naturally tending to that train of 
reflection, which in better instructed minds issues in the apprehension of 
one Supreme and Divine Intelligence. But no instance has been known 
of the knowledge of God having thus, or by any other means, originating 
in themselves, been recovered ; if restored to them at all, it has been by 
the instruction of others, and not by the rational investigation of even 
superior minds in their own tribes. Wherever there has been sfficient 


SECOND. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 271 


mental cultivation to call forth the exercise of the rational faculty in 
search of spiritual and moral truth, the idea of a First Cause has been 
previously known; wherever that idea has been totally obliterated, the 
intellectual powers of man have not been in a state of exercise, and no 
curiosity as to such speculations has been awakened. Matter of fact 
does not therefore support the notion, that the existence of God is dis- 
coverable by the unassisted faculties of man; and there is, I conceive, 
very slender reason to admit the abstract probability. 

A sufficient number of facts are obvious to the most cursory observa. 
tion to show, that without some degree of education, man is wholly the 
creature of appetite. Labour, feasting, and sleep, divide his time, and 
wholly occupy his thoughts. If therefore we suppose a First Cause to be 
discoverable by human investigation, we must seek for the instances 
among a people whose civilization and intellectual culture have roused 
the mind from its torpor, and given it an interest in abstract and philo- 
sophic truth; for to a people so circumstanced as never to have heard 
of God, the question of the existence of a First Cause must be one of mere 
philosophy. Religious motives, whether of hope or fear, have no influ- 
ence where no religion exists, and its very first principle is here sup- 
posed to be as yet undiscovered. Before, therefore. we can conceive 
the human mind to have reached a state of activity sufficiently energetic 
and curious even to commence such an inquiry, we must suppose a 
gradual progress from the uncivilized state, to a state of civil and 
scientific cultivation, and that without religion of any kind; without 
moral control ; without principles of justice, except such as may have 
been slowly elaborated from those relations which concern the grosser 
interests of men, if even they be possible; without consczence ; without 
hope or fear in another life. That no society of civilized men has ever 
been constituted under such circumstances, is what no one will deny ; 
that it is possible to raise a body of men into that degree of civil im. 
provement which would excite the passion for philosophic investigation 
without the aid of religion, which, in its lowest forms of superstition, 
admits in a defective degree what is implied in the existence of God, a 
superior, creative, governing, and destroying power, can have no proof, 
and is contradicted by every fact and analogy with which we are ac. 
quaiated. Under the influence and control of religion, all states, ancient 
and modern, have hitherto been formed and maintained. It has entered 
essentially into all their legislative and gubernative institutions; and 
Atheism is so obviously dissocializing, that even the philosophic Atheists 
of Greece and Rome confined it to their esoter7c doctrine, and were 
equally zealous with others to maintain the public religion as a restraint 
upon the multitude, without which they clearly enough discerned that 
humun laws, and merely human motives, would be totally ineffectual to 
prevent that selfish gratification of the passiors, the enmities, and the 


Pape THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PARI 


cupidity uf men, which would break up every community into its origina 
fragments, and arm every man against-his fellow. 

From this we may conclude, that man without religion cannot exist ir 
that state of civility and cultivation in which his intellectual powers are 
disposed to, or capable of, such a course of inquiry as might lead him te 
a knowledge of God; and that, as a mere barbarian, he would be wholly 
occupied with the gratification of his appetites, or his sloth. Should we 
however suppose it possible, that those who had no previous knowledge 
of God, or of superior invisible powers, might be brought to the habits 
of civil life, and be engaged in the pursuit of various knowledge, (which 
itself however is very incredible,) it would still remain a question 
whether, provided no idea from tradition or instruction had_ beer 
suggested of the existence of spiritual superior beings, or of a supreme 
Creator or Ruler, such a truth would be within the reach of man, even 
in an imperfect form. We have already seen, that a truth may appear 
exceedingly simple, important, and evident, when once known, and on 
this account its demonstration may be considered easy, which neverthe- 
less has been the result of much previous research on the part of the 
discoverer. (Vide part i, c. iv.) The abundant rational evidence of the 
existence of God, which may now be so easily collected, and which is 
so convincing, is therefore no proof, that without instruction from 
Heaven the human mind would ever have made the discovery. God 
is the only way to himself; he cannot in the least be come at, defined 
or demonstrated by human reason; for where would the inquirer fix 
his beginning? He is to search for something he knows not what; a 
nature without known properties; a being without a name. _ It is im- 
possible for such a person to declare or imagine what it is he would 
discourse of, or inquire into; a nature he has not the least apprehension 
of; a subject he has not the least glimpse of, in whole or in part , 
which he must separate from all doubt, inconsistencies, and errors; he 
must demonstrate without one known or sure principle to ground it upon ; 
and draw certain necessary conclusions whereon to rest his judgment, 
without the least knowledge of one term or proposition tu fix his pro- 
cedure upon; and therefore can never know whether his conclusion be 
consequent, or not consequent, truth or falsehood, which is just the same 
in science as in architecture, to raise a building without a foundation.” 
(Ellis’s Knowledge of Divine Things.) 

« Suppose a person, whose powers of argumentation are improved tec 
the utmost pitch of human capacity, but who has received no idea ot. 
God by any revelation, whether from tradition, Scripture, or inspiration, 
how is he to convince himself that God is, and from whence is he to 
iearn what God is? ‘That of which as yet he knows nothing, cannot be 
a subject of his thought, his reasonings, or his conversation. He car 
neither affirm nor deny till he know what is to be affirmed or denied 


SECOND.]  . THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. "O79 


From whence then is our philosopher to divine, in the first instance, his 
idea of the infinite Being, concerning the reality of whose existence he 
8, In the second place, to decide?” (Hare’s Preservative against So- 
cinianism.) 

“Would a single individual, or even a single pair of the human race, 
or indeed several pairs of such beings as we are, if dropt from the hands 
of their Maker in the most genial soil and climate of this globe, without 
a single idea or notion engraved on their minds, ever think of instituting 
such an inquiry ; or short and simple as the process of investigation is, 
would they be able to conduct it, should it somehow occur to them? 
No man who has paid due attention to the means by which all our ideas 
of external objects are introduced into our minds through the medium 
of the senses; or to the still more refined process by which reflecting 
on what passes in our minds themselves, when we combine or analyze 
these ideas, we acquire the rudiments of all our knowledge of intellectual 
objects, will pretend that they would. The efforts of intellect necessary ; 
to discover an unknown truth, are so much greater than those which 
may be sufficient to comprehend that truth, and feel the force of the 
evidence on which it rests, when fairly stated, that for one man, whose 
intellectual powers are equal to the former, ten thousand are only equal 
tothe latter.” (Gleig’s Stackhouse Intro.) 

“Between matter and spirit, things visible and invisible, time and 
eternity, beiags finite and beings infinite, objects of sense and objects 
of faith, the connection is not perceptible to human observation. ‘Though 
we push our researches therefore to the extreme point, whither the light 
of nature can carry us, they will in the end be abruptly terminated, and 
we must stop short at an immeasurable distance between the creature 
and the Creator.” (Van Mildert’s Discourses.) 

These observations have great weight, and though we allow, that the 
argument which proves that the effects with which we are surrounded 
must have been caused, and thus leads us up through a chain of sub- 
ordinate cause to one First Cause, has in it a simplicity, an obviousness, 
and a force, which, when we are previously furnished with the idea of 
God, makes it at first sight difficult to conceive, that men, under any 
degree of cultivation, should be inadequate to it; yet, if the human 
mind ever commenced such an inquiry at all, it is highly probable that 
it would rest in the notion of an eternal succession of causes and effects, 
rather than acquire the ideas of creation, in the proper sense, and of a 
supreme Creator. Scarcely any of the philosophers of the most in- 
yuisitive ages of Greece, or those of their followers at Rome, though 
with the advantage of traditions conveying the knowledge of God, seem 
to have been capable of conceiving of creation out of nothing, (Vide 
pert i, c. iv,) and they consequently admitted the eternity of matter. 
This was equally the case with the Cee the Atheistical, and the 

Vou. I. 1 


Qat THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. “PART 


polytheistical philosophers. (8) It was not among them a subject ot 
dispute ; but taken for a point settled and not to be contradicted, that 
matter was eternal, and could not .nerefore be created. Against this 
notion, since the revelation of truth to man, philosophy has been able to 
adduce a very satisfactory argument; but, though it is not a very 
recondite one, it was never discovered by philosophy while unaided by 
the Scriptures. In like manner philosophy can now furnish cogent 
arguments against an infinite succession of causes and effects; but it 
does not appear probable that they could have been apprehended by 
those to whom the very notion of a First Cause had not been intimated. 
If however it were conceded, that some glimmering of this great truth 
might, by induction, have been discovered by contemplative minds thus 
circumstanced ; by what means could they have demonstrated to them- 
selves that that great collection of bodies which we call the world had 
but one Creator; that he is an incorporeal Spirit; that he is eternal, 
self aos immortal, and independent? Certain it is, that the argu- 
ment d@ posteriori anes not of itself fully confirm all these conclusions ; 
and the argument é priori, when directed to these mysterious points, is 
not, with all the advantages which we enjoy, so satisfactory, as to leave 
no rational ground of doubt as to its conclusiveness. No sober man, we 
apprehend, would be content with that as the only foundation of his 
faith and hope. If indeed the idea of God were innate, as some have 
contended, the question would be set at rest. But then every human 
being would be in possession of it. Of this there is not only no proof at 
all, but the evidence of fact is against it; and the doctrine of innate ideas 
may with confidence be pronounced a mere theory, assumed to support 
favourite notions, but contradicted by all experience. We are all 
conscious that we gain the knowledge of God by instruction ; and we 
observe, that in proportion to the want of instruction, men are ignorant, 
as of other things, so of God. Peter, the wild boy, who in the begin- 
ning of the last century, was found in a wood in Germany, far from 
having any innate sense of God or religion, seemed to be incapable of 
instruction ; and the aboriginal inhabitants of New Holland are found, 
to this day, ina state of knowledge but little superior, and certainly have 
no idea of the existence of one supreme Creator. 

It is therefore to be concluded, that we owe the knowledge of the 
existence of God, and of his attributes, to revelation alone; but, being 
now discovered, the rational evidence of bott is copious and irresisti. 


(8) ‘ Few, if any, of the ancient pagan philcsophe:s acknowledged God to be, 
in the most proper sense, the Creator of the world. By calling him Anpispyos, 
‘the Maker of the world,’ they did not mean, that he brought it out of non. 

existence into being; but only that he built it out of pre-existent materials, and 
disposed it into a regular form and order.” See ample Spey and illustrations in 
ce. 13, part i, of LeLAND’s Necessity of Revelation. 


SECOND. ] THEOLOGICAI. INSTITUTES. 275 


ble ;(9) so much so, that Atheism has never been able to make much 
progress among mankind where this revelation has been preserved. It 
.s resisted by demonstrations too numerous, obvious, and convincing ; and 
is itself too easily proved to involve the most revolting absurdities. 

No subject has employed the thoughts and pens of tne most profound 
thinkers more than the demonstration of the being and attributes of 
God; and tke evidence from fact, reason, and the nature of things, 
which has been collected, is large and instructive. These researches 
‘rave not however brought to light any new attribute of God not found 
an Scripture. This is a strong presumption that the only source of our 
i0tions on this subject is the manifestation which God has been pleased 
.o make of himself, and a confirmation that human reason, if left to itself, 
had never made the slightest discovery respecting the Divine nature.— 
But as to what is revealed, they are of great importance in the contro. . 
versy with polytheism, and with that still more unnatural and monstrous 
perversion, the philosophy which denies a God. 

Demonstrations both @ priori and 4 posteriori, the former beginning 
with the cause, the latter with the effect, have been attempted, not only 
of the being, but also of all the attributes ascribed to God in the Holy 
Scriptures. On each we shall offer some observations and illustrations, 
taking the argument 4 posteriori first, both because, as to the simple 
question of the being of a God, it is the only satisfactory and convincing 
proof; and especially, because it is that only to which the Scriptures 
themselves refer us. “ The heavens declare the glory of God, and the 
jirmament showeth his handy work.” “ For the invisible things of him 
from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the 
things that are made, even his eernal power and Godhead.” “ For by 
the greatness and beauty of the creatures proportionably the Maker of 
them is seen.” 

Nature, as one justly observes, proceeds from causes to effects ; but 
the most certain and successful investigations of man, proceed from 
effects to causes, and this is the character of what logicians have called 
the argument @ posteriort. 

In philosophy it has been laid down as an axiom, “that no event or 
change comes to pass merely of itself, but that every change stands 
related to and implies the existence and influence of something else, in 
consequence of which such change comes to pass, and which may be 
regarded as the principle, beginning, or source of the change referred 

(9) ‘* Tell men there is a God, and their mind embraces it as a necessary 
truth; unfold his attributes, and they will see the explanation of them in his 
works. When the foundation is laid sure and firm that there is a God, and his 
will the cause of all things, and nothing made but by his special appointment 
and command, then the order of beings will fill their minds with a due sense of 


the Divine Majesty, and they may be made a scale to raise juster conceptions ¢f 
what is immortal and invisible.” (Exuis’s Knowledge of Divine Things.) 


276 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


to it. Accordingly the term cause is usuaily employed to denote the 
supposed principle of change; and the “term effect is applied to the 
change considered in relation to the principle of change whence it 
proceeded. This axiom or principle is usually thus expressed :—* For 
every effect there must be a cause.” ‘Nothing exists or comes to 
pass without a cause.”’ ‘ Nihil turpius philosopho quam fieri sine causa 
quicquam dicere.” 

Rooted as this principle is in the common sense, and the common 
observation and experience of mankind, it is assailed in the metaphysi- 
cal Atheism of Hume, who appears to have borrowed his argument 
from the no less skeptical Hobbes, and the relation of cause and effect 
has in consequence been the subject of considerable controversy. 

Causes have been distributed by logicians into efficient, material, 
final, and formal. Efficient causes are the agents that produce certain 
effects; material causes are the subjects on which the agent performs 
his operation ; or those contingent natures which lie within the reach of 
the agent to influence. Final causes are the motives or purposes, 
which move to action, or the end for which any thing is done. «Formal 
causes denote the changes resulting from the operation of the agent ; 
or that which determines a thing to be what it is, and distinguishes it 
from every thing else. 

It is with efficient causes as understood in the above distribution, that 
we are principally concerned. Mr. Hume and his followers have laid 
it down, that there is no instance in which we are able to perceive a 
necessary connection between two successive events; or to compre- 
hend in what manner the one proceeds from the other, as its cause.— 
From experience, they observe, indeed we learn, that there are many 
events, which are constantly conjoined, so that the one invariably fol- 
lows the other; but it is possible, for any thing we know to the con- 
trary, that this connection, though a constant one, as far as our obser 
vation has reached, may not be a necessary connection; nay, it 1s 
possible, that there may be no necessary connections among any of the 
phenomena we see, and if there be any such connections existing, we 
may rest assured that we shall never be able to discover them. This 
doctrine has however been admitted by many who not only deny the 
skeptical conclusions which Hobbes and Hume deduced from it, but 
who contend that it leads to a directly contrary conclusion. ‘The 
fallacy of this part of Mr. Hume’s system,” says Professor Stewart, 
“does not consist in his premises, but in the conclusion which he draws 
from them. The word cause is used, both by philosophers and the 
vulgar, in two senses, which are widely different. When it is said, 
that every change in nature indicates the operation of a cause; the 
word cause expresses something which is supposed to be necessarily 
connected with the change, and without which it could not have hap. 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 277 


pened. ‘This may be called the metaphysical meaning of the word; 
and such causes may be called metaphysical or efficient causes. In’ 
natural philosophy, however, when we speak of one thing being the 
cause of another, all that we mean is, that the two are constantly con- 
joined ; so that when we see the one, we may expect the other.— 
These conjunctions we learn from experience alone; and without an 
acquaintance with them, we could not accommodate our conduct to the 
established course of nature. The causes which are the o'jects of our 
investigation in natural philosophy, may, for the sake of distinction, be 
called physical causes.” (Elements of the Philosophy of the Human 
Mind.) By this distinction and concession all that is skeptical and 
Atheistic, in Hume’s doctrine, is indeed completely refuted ; for if meta- 
physical or efficient causes be allowed, and also that “power, force, 
energy, and causation, are to be regarded as attributes of mind, and can 
exist in mind only,” (Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind,) 
it is of little consequence to the argument as to the existence of a 
supreme First Cause, whether the constant succession of events among 
physical causes, has a necessary connection or not; or in other words, 
whether what is purely material can have the attribute of causation.— 
The writer we have just quoted, thinks that this doctrine is “more 
favourable to Theism, than even the common notions upon this sub- 
ject ;’—“if at the same time we admit the authority of that principle 
of the mind, which leads us to refer every change to an efficient cause,” 
—‘“as it keeps the Deity always in view, not only as the first, but as 
the constantly operating, efficient cause in nature, and as the great con- 
necting principle among all the various phenomena which we observe.” 
(Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind.) This author still 
farther thinks, that Mr. Hume has undesignedly furnished an antidote 
by this error to Spinozism itself.“ Mr. Hume’s doctrine, in the unqua- 
lified form in which he states it, may lead to other consequences not 
less dangerous ; but if he had not the good fortune to conduct metaphy- 
sicians to the truth, he may at least be allowed the merit of having shut 
up for ever one of the most frequented and fatal paths which led them 
astray,”—‘ the cardinal principle on which the whole system of Spinoza 
turns, being that all events, physical and moral, are necessarily linked 
together as causes and effects.” (Dissertation prefized to the Supplement 
o) the Encyclo. Britt.) 

When the doctrine is thus restricted to physical causes, its dangerous 
tendency is greatly weakened, if not altogether neutralized ; yet, not- 
withstanding the authority with which it has been supported, it may be 
suspected that it is radically unsound, and that it leads to consequences 
very contradictory to the experience of mankind, or, at best, that it is 
rather a philosophical paradox or quibble, than a philosophic discovery. 
What are called above metaphysical or efficient causes are admitted, with 


278 TILEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, [PART 


respect to mind, of which “ power, force, energy and causation, are attri- 
‘ buies.” “ One kind of cause, namely, what a man, or any other living being, 
is to his own voluntary actions, or to those changes which he produces 
directly in himself, and indirectly in himself, by the occasional exertion of 
his own power,” says Dr. Gregory, (Literary and Philosophical Essays,’ 
* may be called for distinction’s sake an agent. That there are such 
agents, and that many events are to be referred to them, as either wholly 
or partly their causes or principles of change, is not only certain but even 
self evident.” We are all conscious of power to produce certain 
effects, and we are sure that there is between this cause and the effect 
produced, more than a mere relation of antecedence and sequence, for 
we are conscious not only of designing to produce the effect, but of the 
exertion of power, though we do not always know the medium by which 
the power acts upon the object, as when we move the hand or the foot 
voluntarily, nor the mode in which the exerted energy connects itself 
with the result. Yet the result follows the will, and however often this 
is repeated, it is still the same. ‘The relations between physical causes 
and effects must be different from this ; but if according to the doctrine 
of Hume it were only a relation of succession, the following absurdities, 
as stated by Dr. Reid, (Reid’s Essays,) would inevitably follow— night 
would be the cause of day, and day the cause of night; for no two 
things have more constantly followed each other since the beginning of 
the world. Any thing, for what we know, may be the cause of any 
thing, since nothing is essential to a cause but its being constantly fol- 
lowed by the effect: what is unintelligent may be the cause of what is 
intelligent ; folly may be the cause of wisdom, and evil of good; and 
thus all reasoning from the effect to the nature of the cause, and all rea- 
soning from final causes, must be given up as fallacious.” Physical 
causes, as for example, what impulse is to motion, heat to expansion, 
fusion, and evaporation; the earth to the fall of a stone toward it; 
the sun and moon to the tides; express a relation different from that 
between man and any of his voluntary actions ; but it cannot be the 
same as the relation of priority and succession among things or events. 
Men have been mistaken, in some cases, in taking the circumstances of 
the succession of one event to another as a proof of their relation as 
cause and effect ; but even that shows that, in the fixed opinion of 
mankind, constat succession, when there is an appearance of tne 
uependence of one thing upon another, implies more than mere succcs- 
sion, and that what is considered as the cause has an efficiency either 
from itself or by derivation, by which the effect is brought to pass. TI. 
is truly obseryed by Dr. Brown, (Procedure, §:c, of the Human Under- 
standing,) “ We tind by observation and experience that such and such 
effects are produced ; but when we attempt to think of the reason why, 
and the manner how the causes work those effects, then we are at a 


SELOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 279 


stand, and all our reasoning is precarious, or at best but probable con- 
jecture.” From hence however it would be a ridiculous conclusion, 
that because we are ignorant of the manner in which physical causes 
act, they de not act at all; or that none such exist in the ordinarily 
received sense ; that is, that the effect is not dependent upon what is 
called the cause, and that the presence of the latter, according to the 
established laws of nature, is not necessary to the effect, so that without 
it the effect would not follow. The efficient cause may be latent, but 
the physical cause is that through which it operates, and must be sup- 
posed to have an adaptation to convey the power, so to speak, in some 
precise mode, by mechanical or other means, to the result, or there 
could neither be ingenuity and contrivance in the works of art, nor wis. 
dom in the creation. A watch might indicate the hour without wheels, _ 
and a clod might give as copious a light to the planetary system as the 
sun. If the doctrine of Hume denies efficzent causes, it contradicts all 
consciousness and the experience founded upon it; if it applies only’ to 
physical causes, it either confounds them with efficient causes, or says 
in paradoxical language, only what has been better said by others, and 
that without any danger of involving either absurd or dangerous conse. 
quences. ‘ When an event is produced according to a known law of 
nature, the law of nature is called the cause of that event. But a law 
of nature is not the efficient cause of auy event; it is only the rule 
according to which the efficient cause acts. A law is a thing con- 
ceived in the mind of a rational being, not a thing which has a real 
existence, and therefore like a motive, it can neither act nor be acted 
upon, and consequently cannot be an efficient cause. If there be 
no being that acts according to that law, it produces no effect.” (Reid’s 
Essays.) “ All things that are done in the world, are done immediately 
by God himself, or by created intelligent beings ; matter being evidently 
not at all capable of any laws or powers whatever, any more than it is 
capable of intelligence; excepting only this one negative power, that 
every part of it will, of itself, always and necessarily continue in that 
state, whether of rest or motion, wherein it at present is. So that all 
those things which we commonly say are the effects of the natural 
powers of matter and laws of motion, of gravitation, attraction, or the 
like, are indeed, (if we will speak strictly and properly,) the effects of 
God’s acting upon matter continually, and every moment, either immedi. 
ately by L.mself, or mediately by some created intelligent beings. Conse- 
quently there is no such thing as what men commonly call the course 
of nature, or the powers of nature. The course of nature, truly anc 
properly speaking, is nothing else but the will or God producing certain 
effects in a continued, regular, constant, and uniform manner.” (Dr. 
Samuel Clarke.) 

The true state of the case appears to be, 1 That there are efficient 


280 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. (PART 


causes, and that the relation between them and their effects is necessary, 
since, without the operation of the efficient, the effect would not take 
place. This we find in ourselves, and we proceed therefore upon the 
surest ground when we ascribe effects which are above human power, 
to a causation which is more than human, and, in the case of the phe- 
nymena of universal nature, to a Divine cause, or in other words to God. 
2. That there are physical causes, between which and their effects there 
is arelation or connection very different to that of a mere order of suc- 
cession, which in fact is a relation which entirely excludes the idea of 
causation in any sense. According to the present established order of 
nature, this also may be termed a necessary connection, although not 
necessary in the sense of its being the only method by which the infinite 
and first efficient could produce the effect. His resources are doubtless 
boundless ; but having established a certain order in nature, or, in other 
words, having given certain powers and properties to matter, with 
reference to a mutual operation of different bodies upon each other, his 
supreme efficiency, his causing power, takes its direction, and displays 
itself in this order, and is modified by the pre-established and constantly 
upheld properties through and by which it operates. So far, and in this 
sense, the relation between physical causes and effects is a necessary 
one, and the doctrine of final causes is thus established by those wondrous 
arrangements and adaptations in the different parts of nature, and in 
individual bodies,which carry on, and conduct the ever-acting efficiency 
of God to those wise and benevolent ends which he has proposed 
Thus the sun, by virtue of a previously established adaptation between 
its own qualities, the earth’s atmosphere and the human eye, is the 
necessary cause of light and vision, though the true efficient be the Crea- 
tor himself, ever present to his own arrangements; as the spring of a 
watch is the necessary cause of the motion of the wheels and indices 
though the efficient, in the proper sense, is the artist himself who framed 
the whole. In these cases there is, however, this difference to be ob. 
served, though it affects not the argument of a secondary physival causa. 
tion, that the maker of a watch, finding certain bodies, endued with 
certain primary properties, may array them one against the other, and 
so leave his work to go on without his constant impulse and interposition ; 
but in nature, the primary properties of matter, and its existence itself are 
derived and dependent, and need the constant upholding of Him who spaae 
them out of no.hing, and “by whom they all consist.” 
The relation of cause and effect according to the common sense 
and observation of mankind, being thus established, (1) we proceed to 
the arguments which are founded upon it. 


(1) The language of every nation is formed on the connection between cause 
and effect. For in every language there are not only many words directly ex- 
pressing ideas of this subject, such as cause, efficiency, effect, production, produce, 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, 281 


The existence of God, once communicated to us by his own revela- 
‘on, direct or traditional, is capable of ample proof, and receives an 
irresistible corroborative evidence, a posteriori. 

An argument @ priori, is an argument from something antecedent to 
something consequent ; from principle to corollary ; from cause to effect. 
An argument d posteriori, on the contrary, is an argument from consequent 
“0 antecedent, from effect to cause. Both these kinds of proof have been 
resorted to in support of the doctrine of the existence of God; but it is 
on the latter only that any dependence can be placed, and the demonstra- 
tion is too strong to need a doubtful auxiliary. 

The first argument, @ posteriori, for the existence of a God, is drawn 
from our own actual existence, and that of other beings around us. 
This, by an obvious error, has sometimes been called an argument @ 
priori ; but if our existence is made use of to prove the existence of a 
supreme Creator, it is unquestionably an argument which proceeds from 
consequent to antecedent, from effect to cause. This ancient, and 
obvious demonstration has been placed in different views by different 
writers. Locke has, in substance, thus stated it. Every man knows 
with absolute certainty, that he himself exists. He knows also that he 
did not always exist, but began to be. It is clearly certain to him, that 
his existence was caused and not fortuitous, and was produced by a cause 
adequate to the production. By an adequate cause, is invariably 
intended, a cause possessing and exerting an efficacy sufficient to bring 
any effect to pass. In the present case, an adequate cause is one possess- 
ing, and exerting all the understanding necessary to contrive, and the 
power necessary to create, such a being as the man in question. ‘This 
cause is what we are accustomed to call God. ‘The understanding 
necessary to contrive, and the power necessary tu create a being com- 
pounded of the human soul and body, admit of no limits. He who can 
contrive and create such a being, can contrive and create any thing. 
He who actually contrived and created man, certainly contrived and 
created all things. 

The same argument is given more copiously, but with great clearness, 
by Mr. Howe :— 

“ We therefore begin with God’s existence ; for the evincing of which, 


effectuate, create, gererate, &c, or words equivalent to these; but every verb 
in every language, ex :ept the intransitive impersonal verbs, and the verb substan. 
tive, involves, of covrse, causation or efficiency, and refers always to an agent, or 
zause, in such a manner, that without the operation of this cause or agent, the 
verb would have no meaning.—All mankind, except a few Atheistical and skepti- 
cal philosophers, have thus agreed in acknowledging this connection, and they 
have acknowledged it as fully as others in their customary language. ‘hey have 
spoken exactly as other men speak, and the connection between canse and effect 
is as often declared in their conversation and writings, and as much relied on, as 
am those of other men. (Dwicur’s Tuko.oey, vol. i, p. 5.) 


282 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, |PARYT 


we may be most assured, F%rst, that ‘here hath been somewhat or other 
from all eternity; or that, looking backward, somewhat of real being 
must be confessed eternal. Let such as have not been used to think of 
any thing more than what they could see with their eyes, and to whom 
reasoning only seems difficult because they have not tried what they cam do 
in it, but use their thoughts a little, and by moving them a few easy steps, 
they will soon find themselves as sure of this as that they see, or hear, 
or understand, or are any thing. 

“For being sure that something now is, (that you see, for instance, or 
are something,) you must then acknowledge, that certainly something 
always was, and hath ever been, or been from all eternity ; or else you 
must say, that, some time, nothing was; or that all being once was not. 
And so, since you find that something now is, there was a time when all 
being did begin to be ; that is, that till that time there was nothing ; but 
now, at that time something first began to be. For what can be plainer 
than that if all being some time was not, and now some being is, every 
thing of being had a beginning. And thence it would follow, that some 
‘being, that is, the first that ever began to be, did of itself start up out of 
nothing, or made itself to be when before nothing was. 

“But now, do you not plainly see that it is altogether impossible any 
thing should do so; that is, when it was as yet nothing, and when nothing 
at all as yet was, that it should make itself, or come into being of itself! 
For surely making itself is doing something. But can that which 1s 
nothing do any thing? Unto all doing there must be some doer. Where- 
fore a thing must be before it can do any thing; and therefore it would 
follow, that it was before it was; or was and was not, was something and 
nothing, at the same time. Yea, and that it was diverse from itself; 
for a cause must be a distinct thing from that which is caused by it. 
Wherefore it is most apparent, that some being hath ever been, or did 
never begin to be. 

« Whence, farther, it is also evident, Secondly, that some being was’ 
uncaused, or was ever of itself without any cause. For what never was 
trom another had never any cause, since nothing could be its own cause. 
And somewhat, as appears from what hath been said, never was from 
another. Or it may be plainly argued thus ; that either some being was 
uncaused, or all being was caused. But if all being was caused, then 
some one at least was the cause of itself; which hath been already shown 
impossible. ‘Therefore the expression commonly used concerning the 
first being, that it was of itself, is only to be taken negatively, that is, that 
it was not of another ; not positively, as if it did some time make itself. 
Or what there is positive signified by that form of speech, is only to 
be taken thus, that it was a being of that nature, as that it was impossible 
it should ever not have been; not that it did ever of itself step out of not 
being into being 


SECOND. J THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 283 


“ And now it is. hence farther evident, Thirdly, that some being is 
‘ndependent upon any other, that is, whereas it already appears that 
some being did never depend on any other, as a productive cause, and 
was not beholden to any other, that it might come into being; it is 
thereupon equally evident that it is simply independent, or cannot be be- 
holden to any for its continued being. For what did never need a 
productive cause, doth as little need a sustaining or conserving cause. 
And to make this more plain, either some being 1s independent, or all 
being is dependent. But there is nothing without the compass of all 
being Whereon it may depend. Wherefore to say, that all being doth 
depend, is to say, it depends on nothing, that is, that it depends not. 
For to depend on nothing, is not to depend. It is therefore a manifest 
contradiction to say that all being doth depend; against which it is no 
relief to urge, that all beings do circularly depend on one another. (2) 
For so, however the whole circle or sphere of being should depend on 
nothing ; or one at last depend on itself, which negatively taken, as be- 
fore, is true, and the thing we contend for—that one, the common sup- 
port of all the rest, depends not on any thing without itself. 

«¢ Whence also it is plainly consequent, Fourthly, that such a Being 
is necessary, or doth necessarily exist: that is, that it is of such a na- 
ture as that it could not or cannot but be. For what:is in being, neither 
by its own choice, nor any other’s, is necessarily. But what was not 
made by itself, (which hath been shown to be impossible,) nor by any 
other, (as it hath been proved something was not,) it is manifest, it 
’ neither depended on its choice, nor any other’s that it is. And there- 
fore, its existence is not owing to choice at all, but to the necessity of 
its own nature. Wherefore it is always by a simple, absolute, natural 
necessity ; being of a nature to which it is altogether repugnant and 
impossible ever not to have been, or ever to cease from being. And 
now having gone thus far, and being assured, that hitherto we feel the 
ground firm under US ; that is, having gained a full certainty, that there 


(2) The notion of an infinite series of caused and successive beings is absurd ; 
for of this infinite series, either some one part has not been successive to any 
other, or else all the several parts of it have been successive. If sore one part 
of it was not successive, then it had a first part, which destroys the supposition 
of its infinity. If all the several parts of it have been successive, then have they 
all once been future: but if they have all been future, a time may by conceived 
when none of them had existence: and if so, then it follows, either that all the 
parts and consequently the whole of this infinite series must have arisen from 
nothing, which is absurd ; or else, that there must be something.in the whole, 
beside what is contained in all the parts, which is also absurd. See Clarke’s De- 
monstration, and Woolaston’s Religion of Nature. ‘A chain,” says Dr. Paley, 
“composed of an infinite number of links can no more support itself, than a 
chain composed of a finite number of links. If we increase the number of links 
from ten to a hundred, and fromm a hundred to a thousand, &c, we make not the 
smallest approach, we observe not the smallest tandency toward self support ” 


284 THEULOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


Is an eternal, uncaused, independent, necessary Being, and therefore 
actually and everlastingly existing ; we may advance one step farther, 

« And with equal assurance add, Fifthly, that this eternal, independent, 
uncaused, necessary Being, is self active ; that is, (which is at present 
meant,) not such as acts upon itself, but that which hath the power of 
acting upon other things, in and of itself, without deriving it from any 
other. Or at least that there is such a Being as is eternal, uncaused, 
&c, having the power of action in and of itself. For either such a 
Being as hath been already evinced is of itself active or unactive, o1 
hath the power of action of itself or not. If we will say the latter, let 
it be considered what we say, and to what purpose we say it. 

“1, We are to weigh what it is we affirm, when we speak of an 
eternal, uncaused, independent, necessary Being, which is of itself to- 
tally unactive, or destitute of any active power. If we will say there 
is some such thing, we will confess, when we have called it something, 
it is a very silly, despicable, idle something, and a something, (if we 
look upon it alone,) as good as nothing. For there is but little odds 
between being nothing, and being able to do nothing. We will again 
confess, eternity, self origination, independency, necessity of existence, 
to be very great and highly dignifying attributes ; and import a most 
inconceivable excellency. For what higher glory can we ascribe to 
any being, than to acknowledge it to have been from eternity of itself, (3) 
without being beholden to any other, and to be such as that it can be 
and cannot but be in the same state, self-subsisting, and self sufficient to 
all eternity 7? But can our reason either direct or endure, that we should 
so incongruously misplace so magnificent attributes as these, and ascribe 
the prime glory of the most excellent Being unto that which is next to’ 
nothing? But if any in the meantime will be so inconsiderate as to say 
this, let it 

“2. Be considered to what purpose they say it. Is it to exclude a 
necessary self-active Being? But it cau signify nothing to that purpose. 
For such a Being thev will be forced to acknowledge, let them do what 
they can (beside putting out their own eyes) notwithstanding. For 
why do they acknowledge any necessary being at all, that was ever of 
itself? Is it not because they cannot, otherwise, for their hearts, tell 
how it was ever possible that any thing at all could come into being? 


(3) ‘*We will acknowledge an impropriety in this word, and its conjugate, 
self originate, sometimes hereafter used: which yet is recompensed by their con- 
veniency ; as they may perhaps find who shall make trial how to express the 
sense intended by them in other words. And they ate used without suspicion, 
that it can be thought they are meant to signify as if God ever gave original to 
himself; but in the negative sense, that he never received .t from any other; 
yea, and that he is, what is more than equivalent to his being self caused; 
namely, a Being of himself so excellent as not to need or be capable t> admit 
any cause.” 


SECOND. THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 285 


But, finding that something is, they are compelled tu acknowledge that 
semething hath ever been, necessarily-and of itself. No other account 
could be given how other things came to be. But what? doth it signify 
any thing toward the giving an account of the original of all other 
things; to suppose only an eternal, self-subsisting, unactive Being? Did 
that cause other things to be? Will not their own breath choke them 
if they attempt to utter the self-contradicting words, an unactive cause, 
which is efficient or the author of any thing? And do they not see they 
are as far from their mark, or do no more toward the assigning an ori- 
ginal to ali other things, by supposing an eternal, unactive being only, 
than if they supposed none at all? That which can do nothing, can no 
inore be the productive cause of another, than that which ts nothing. 
Wherefore, by the same reason that hath constrained us to acknowledge 
an eternal, uncaused, independent, necessary Being, we are also un- 
avoidably led to acknowledge this Being to be self active, or such as 
hath the power of action in and of itself; or that there is certainly such 
a Being, who is the cause of all the things which our senses tell us are 
existent in the world. 

‘“‘ For what else is left us to say or think? Will we think fit to say 
that all things we behold were, as they now are, necessarily existent 
from all eternity? That were to speak against our own eyes, which 
continually behold the rise and fall of living things, of whatsoever sort 
or kind, that can come under their notice. For all the things we be- 
hold are, in some respect or other, internally or externally, continually 
changing, and therefore could never long be beheld as they are. And 
to say then, they have been continually changing from eternity, and yet 
have been necessarily, is unintelligible and flat nonsense. For what is 
necessarily, is always the same; and what is in this or that posture 
iecessarily, (tha: 3, by an intrinsic, simple and absolute necessity, which 
nust be here meant,) must be ever so. Wherefore to suppose the world 
in this or that state necessarily, and yet that such a state is changeable, 
is an impossible and self-contradicting supposition. 

“ But now, since we find that the present state of things is change. 
able, and actually changing, and that what is changeable is not neces. 
sarily, and of itself; and since it is evident that there is some necessarv 
Being, otherwise nothing could ever have been; and that without action 
nothing could be from it; since also all change imports somewhat of 
passion, and all passion supposes action ; and all action, active power ; 
and active power, an original seat or subject, which is self active, or 
hath the power of action in and of itself; (for there could be no deriva- 
tion of it from that which hath it not, and no first derivation, but from 
that which hath it originally of itself; and a first derivation there must 
be, since all things that are, or ever have been, furnished with it, and _ 
not of themselves, must either immediately or mediately have derived it 


28H THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES [PART 


from that which had it of itself :) it is therefore manifest that there is a 
necessary, self-active Being, the Cause and Author of this perpetually 
variable state and frame of things. 

« And hence, since we can frame no notion of life which self-active 
power doth not, at least, comprehend, (as upon trial we shall find that 
we cannot,) it is consequent, Sizth/y, that this Being is also originally 
vital, and the root of all vitality, such as hath life in or of itself, and 
from whence it is propagated to every other living thing.” (Living 
Temple.) } 

The self-existent, eternal, self-active, and vital Being, whose necessary 
existence has thus been proved, is also intelligent ; of which the demon. 
stration @ posteriori is large and convincing. For since we are speak. 
ing of a Being who is himself independent, and upon whom all things 
depend ; and from the dependence of every thing we see around us, we 
necessarily infer a cause of them, whom we do not see, but who must 
himself be independent, and from whom they must have originated ; 
their actual existence, and their being upheld and sustained, prove his 
power, and their arrangement, and wise and evidently intentional dispo- 
sition, prove also his zntelligence. 

In the proposition that the self-existent and original cause of all things 
must be an intelligent Being, Dr. Samuel Clarke justly observes, lies the 
main question between us and Atheists. ‘ For that something must be 
self existent, and that that which is self existent must be eternal and in- 
finite, and the original cause of all things, will not bear much dispute. 
But all Atheists, whether they hold the world to be of itself eternal, both 
as to matter and form, or whether they hold the matter to be eternal, 
and the form contingent, or whatever hypothesis they frame, have al- 
ways asserted and must maintain, either directly or indirectly, that the 
self-existent Being is not an intelligent Being; but either pure inactive 
matter, or (which in other words is the very same thing,) a mere neces- 
sary agent. For a mere necessary agent must of necessity either be 
plainly and directly in the grossest sense unintelligent, which was the 
notion of the ancient Atheists of the self-existent Being; or else its in- 
telligence, according to Spinoza and some moderns, must be wholly 
separate from any power of will and choice, which in respect of excel. 
lency and perfection, or indeed to any common sense, is the very same 
thing as no intelligence at all. Now that the self-existent Being is not 
such a blind and unintelligent necessity, but in the most proper sense an 
. understanding and really active Being, does not indeed so obviously and 
directly appear to us by considerations @ priort ; but @ posteriori almost 
every thing in the world demonstrates to us this great truth, and affords 
undeniable arguments to prove that the world and all things therein are 
the effects of an in/elligent and knowing Cause. 

«And Ist. Since in general there are manifestly in things various 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 287 


kinds of powers, and very different excellencies and degrees of perfec. 
lon; it must needs be, that, in the order of causes and effects, the cause 
must always be more excellent than the effect: and consequently the 
self-existent Being, whatever that be supposed to be, must of necessity 
(being the original of all things) contain in itself the sum and highest 
degree of all the perfections of all things. Not because that which is 
self existent, must therefore have all possible perfections: (for this, 
though most certainly true in itself, yet cannot be so easily demonstrated 
a priort:) but because it is impossible that any effect should have any 
perfection, which was not in the cause. For if it had, then that perfec- 
tion would be caused by nothing; which is a plain contradiction. Now 
an unintelligent being, it is evident, cannot be endued with all the perfec. 
tions of all things in the world; because intelligence is one of those 
perfections. All things therefore cannot arise from an unintelligent 
original ; and consequently the self-existent Bemg must of necessity be 
intelligent. oth 

«There is no possibility for an Atheist to avoid the force of this argu- 
ment any other way, than by asserting one of these two things: either 
that there is no intelligent Being at all in the universe ; or that intelli- 
gence is no distinct perfection, but merely a composition of figure and 
motion, as colour and sounds are vulgarly supposed to be. Of the 
former of these assertions, every man’s own consciousness is an abund- 
aut confutation. For they who contend that beasts are mere machines, 
have yet never presumed to conjecture that men are so too. And 
that the latter assertion (in which the main strength of Atheism hes) is 
most absurd and impossible, shall be shown. 

«For since in men in particular there is undeniably that power, which 
we call thought, intelligence, consciousness, perception or knowledge ; 
there must of necessity either have been from eternity without any 
original cause at all, an infinite succession of men, whereof no one hag 
had a necessary, but every one a dependent and communicated being ; 
or else these beings, endued with perception and consciousness, must at 
some time or other have arisen purely out of that which had no such 
quality as sense, perception, or consciousness ; or else they must have 
been produced by some intelligent superior Being. ‘There never was 
nor can be any Atheist whatsoever, that can deny but one of these three 
suppositions must be the truth. If, therefore, the two former can be 
proved to be false and impossible, the latter must be owned to be de- 
monstrably true. Now that the first is impossible, is evident from what 
has been already said. And that the second is likewise impossible, may 
be thus demonstrated :— 

“If perception or intelligence be any real distinct quality, or perfec- 
tion , and not a mere effect or composition of unintelligent figure and 
motion ; then beings endued with perception or consciousness, can never 


2838 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES [PART 


possibly have arisen purely out of that which itself had no sucin quality 
us perception or consciousness ; because nothing can ever give to an. 
other any perfection which it hath not either actually in itself, or at least 
in a higher degree. This is very evident ; because, if any thing could 
give to another any perfection which it has not itself, that perfection 
would be caused absolutely by nothing ; which is a plain contradiction. 
If any one here replies, (as Mr. Gildon has done in a letter to Mr, 
Biount,) that colours, sounds, tastes, and the like, arise from figure and 
motion, which have no such qualities in themselves; or that figure, 
divisibility, mobility, and other qualitics of matter, are confessed to be 
given from God, who yet cannot, without extreme blasphemy, be said 
to have any such qualities himself; and that therefore in like manner, 
perception or intelligence may arise out of that which has no intelligence 
itself; the answer is very easy: First, that colours, sounds, tastes, and 
the like, are by no means effects arising from mere figure and motion ; 
there being nothing in the bodies themselves, the objects of the senses, 
that has any manner of similitude to any of these qualities ; but they are 
plainly thoughts or modifications of the mind itself, which is an intelli- 
gent being; and are not properly caused, but only occasioned, by the 
impressions of figure and motion. Noy will it at all help an Atheist (as 
to the present question) though we should here make for him, (that we 
may allow him the greatest possible advantage,) even that most absurd 
supposition, that vhe mind itself is nothing but mere matter, and not at 
all an immaterial substance. For, even supposing it to be mere matter, 
yet he must needs confess it to be such matter, as is endued not only 
with figure and motion, but also with the quality of intelligence and per- 
ception: and consequently, as to the present question, it will still come to 
the same thing ; that colours, sounds, and the like. which are not quali- 
ties of unintelligent bodies, but perceptions of mind, can no more be 
caused by, or arise from mere unintelligent figure, and motion, than 
colour can be a triangle, or sound a square, or something be caused by 
nothing. Secondly ; as to the other part of the objection, that figure, 
divisibility, mobility, and other qualities of matter, are (as we ourselves 
acknowledge) given it from God, who yet cannot, without extreme 
blasphemy, be said to have any such qualities himself; and that, there- 
fore, in like manner, perception or intelligence may arise out of that 
which has no intelligence itself; the answer is still easier: that figure 
divisibility, mobility, and other such like qualities of matter, are not real 
proper, distinct, and positive powers, but only negative qualities, deficien. 
cies, or imperfections. And though no cause can communicate to its 
effect any real perfection which it has not itself, yet the effect may easily 
have many imperfections, deficiencies, or negative qualities, which are 
nm in the cause. ‘Though therefore figure, divisibility, mobility, ana 
ne like, (which are mere negations, as all limitations, and all defects of 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES 289 


vowers are,) may be in the effect, and not in the cause ; yet intelligence, 
(which I now suppose, and shall prove immediately, to be a distinct 
quality ; and which no man can say is a mere negation,) cannot pus- 
sibly.be so. 

“ Having therefore thus demonstrated, that if perception or intelligence 
be supposed to be a distinct quality or perfection, (though even but of 
matter only, if the Atheist pleases,) and not a mere eflect or composi- 
tion of unintelligent figure and motion; then beings endued with per- 
ception or consciousness can never have arisen purely out of that which 
had no such quality as perception or consciousness ; because nothing can 
ever give to another any perfection, which it has not itself: it will easily 
appear, secondly, that perception or intelligence is really such a distinct 
quality or perfection, and not possibly a mere effect or composition of 
unintelligent figure and motion: and that for this plain reason, because 
intelligence is not figure, and consciousness is not motion. For what. 
ever can arise from, or be compounded of any things, is still only those 
very things of which it was compounded. And if infinite compositions 
or divisions be made eternally, the things will be but eternally the same. 
And all their possible effects can never be any thing but repetitions of 
the same. For instance: all possible changes, compositions, or divi- 
sions of figure, are still nothing but figure: and all possible composi- 
tions or effects of motion, can eternally be nothing but mere motion. If 
therefore there ever was a time when there was nothing in the universe 
but matter and motion, there never could have been any thing else 
therein but matter and motion. And it would have been as impossible, 
there should ever have existed any such thing as intelligence or con- 
sciousness ; or even. any such thing as light, or heat, or sound, or 
colour, or any of those we call secondary qualities of matter; as it is 
now impossible for motion to be blue or red, or for a triangle to be 
transformed into a sound, ‘That which has been apt to deceive men in 
this matter, is this, that they imagine compounds to be somewhat really 
different from that of which they are compounded: which is a very 
great mistake. For all the things, of which men so judge, either, if 
they be really different, are not compounds nor effects of what men 
judge them to be, but are something totally distinct ; as when the vulgar 
think colours and sounds to be properties inherent in bodies, when indeed 
they are purely thoughts of the mind: or else, if they be really com- 
pounds and effects, then they are not different, but exactly the same 
that ever they were ; as, when two triangles put together make a square, 
that square is still nothing but two triangles; or when a square cut in 
halves makes two triangles, those two triangles are still only the two halves 
of a square ; or when the mixture of blue and yellow powder makes a 
green, that green is still nothing but blue and yellow intermixed, as is- 
nlainly visible by the help of microscopes. And in short, every thing 

Vow I. 19 


a 


290 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


by composition, division or motion, 1s uothing else but the very same it 
was before, taken either in whole or in parts, or in different place or 
order. He therefore that will affirm intelligence to be the effect of a 
system of unintellizent matter in motion, must either affirm intelligence 
to be a mere pame or external denomination of certain figures and mo 
‘iens, and that it differs from unintelligent figures and motions, ne other. 
wise than as a circle or triangle differs from a square, which is evidently 
absurd: or else he must suppose it to be a real distinct quality, arising 
from certain motions of a system of matter not in itself intelligent ; and 
then this no less evidently absurd consequence would follow, that one 
quality inhered in another; for, in that case, not the substance itself, 
the particles of which the system consists, but the mere mode, the par- 
ticular mode of motion and figure would be intelligent. 

“That the self existent and original cause of all things, is an intelli- 
gent Being, appears abundantly from the excellent variety, order, beauty, 
and wonderful contrivance, and fitness of all things in the world, to 
their proper and respective ends. Since therefore things are thus, it 
must unavoidably be granted, (even by the most obstinate Atheist,) either 
that all plants and animals are originally the work of an intelligent Be- 
ing, and created by him in time; or that having been from eternity im 
the same order and method they now are in, they are an eternal effect 
of an eternal intelligent Cause continually exerting his infinite power 
and wisdom ; or else that without any self-existent original at all, they 
have been derived one from another in an eternal succession, by an 
infinite progress of dependent causes. The first of these three ways is, 
the conclusion we assert: the second, (so far as the cause of Atheism is 
concerned,) comes to the very same thing: and the third I have already 
shown to be absolutely impossible and a contradiction. 

“Supposing it was possible that the form of the world, and all the 
visible things contained therein, with the order, beauty, and exquisite 
fitness of their parts; nay, supposing that even intelligence itself, with 
consciousness and thought, in all the beings we know, could possibly be 
the result or effect of mere unintelligent matter, figure, and motion ; 
(which is the most unreasonable and impossible supposition in the world ;) 
yet even still there would remain an undeniable demonstration, that the 
sclf-existent Being, (whatever it be supposed to be,) mtist be intelligent 
For even these principles themselves, unintelligent figure and motion. 
could never have possibly existed, without there had been before them 
an intelligent cause. I instance in motion. It is evident there is now 
such a thing as motion ia the world; which either began at some time 
or other, or was eternal. If it began at any time, then the question is 
granted, that the First Cause is an intelligent being: for mere unintelli- 
gent matter, and that at rest, it is manitest, could never of itselt begin to 
move Qn the contrary, if motion was eterna , it was either eternally 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 291 


caused by some eternal intelligent Being, or it must of itself be neces. 
sary and self existent ; or else, without any necessity in its own nature, 
and without any external necessary cause, it must have existed from 
eternity by an endless successive communication. If motion was eter. 
nally caused by some eternal intelligent Being ; this also is granting the 
question as to the present dispute. If it was of itself necessary and self 
existent ; then it follows that it must be a contradiction in terms, to sup- 
pose any matter to be at rest: beside, (as there is no end of absurdities, ) 
it must also imply a contradiction, to suppose that there might possibly 
have been originally more or less motion in the universe than there 
actually was: which is so very absurd a consequence, that Spinoza 
himself, though he expressly asserts all things to be necessary, yet seems 
ashamed here to speak out his opinion, or rather plainly contradicts 
himself in the question about the original of motion. But if it be said, 
lastly, that motion, without any necessity in its own nature, and without 
any external necessary cause, has existed from eternity, merely by an 
endless successive communication, as Spinoza, inconsistenlty enough, 
seems to assert; this I have before shown to be a plain contradiction. 
It remains therefore that motion must of necessity be originally caused 
by something that is intelligent; or else there never could have been 
any such thing as motion im the world. And consequently the self- 
existent Being, the original Cause of all things, (whatever it is supposed 
to be,) must of necessity be an intelligent Being.” 

The argument from the .existence of motion to the existence of an 
intelligent First Cause is so convincing, that the farther illustration of it, 
in which the absurdities of Atheism are exhibited in another view, will 
not be unacceptable. 

‘< Consider that all this motion and motive power must have some 
source and fountain diverse from the dull and sluggish matter moved 
thereby, unto which it already hath appeared impossible that it should 
originally and essentially belong. 

« Also that the mzghty active Being, which hath been proved neces- 
surily existent, and whereto it must first belong, if we suppose it desti- 
tute of the self-moderating principle of wisdom and counsel, cannot but 
be always exerting its motive power, invariably used to the same degree, 
(hat is, to its very utmost, and can never cease or fail to do so. For its 
act knows no limit but that of its power, (if this can have any,) and its 
power is essential to it, and its essence is necessary. 

‘¢ Farther, that the motion impressed upon the matter of the universe, 
must hereupon necessarily have received.a continual increase ever since 
it came into veing. 

“ That supposing this motive power to have been exerted fiom eter. 
nity, it must have been increased long ago to an infinite excess. 5 

“That hence the coalition of the particles of matter for the forming 


292 THEOLSGICAL INSTITUTES. . +. {PART 


of any thing, had been altogether impossible: for let us suppose this 
exerted motive power to have been, any instant, but barely sufficient for 
such a formation ; because that could not be despatched in an instant, it 
would, by its continual increase, be grown so over-suflicient, as, in the 
next instant, to dissipate the particles, but now beginning to unite. 

At least, it would be most apparent, that if ever such a frame of 
things as we now behold could have been produced, that motive power, 
increased te so infinite an excess, must have shattered the whole frame 
in pieces, many an age ago, or rather never have permitted that such a 
thing as we call an age could possibly have been. 

“QOur experience gives us not to observe any such destructive or 
remarkable changes in the course of nature, and this indeed (as was 
long ago foretold) is the great argument of the Atheistical scoffers in 
these latter days, that things remain as they were from the beginning of 
the creation to this day. But let it be soberly weighed, how it is pos. 
sible that the general consistency, which we observe in things through. 
out the universe, and their steady orderly posture, can stand with this 
momently increase of motion. 

«For we see when we throw a stone out of pur hand, whatever of 
the impressed force it imparts to the air, through which it makes its 
way, or whatever degree of it vanishes of itself, it yet retains a part a 
considerable time, which carries it all the length of its journey, and 
does not vanish and die away on the sudden. So when we here consider 
in the continual momently renewz!i of the same force, always necessa- 
rily going forth from the same mighty agent, without any moderation or 
restraint, that every following zmpetus doth so immediately overtake the 
former, that whatever we can suppose lost, is yet abundantly over-sup- 
plied ; upon the whole, it cannot fail to be ever growing, and before now 
must have grown to that all-destroying excess before mentioned. 

“It is therefore evident, that as without the supposition of a self-active 
Being, there could be no such thing as motion, so without the supposi- 
tion of an intelligent Being, (that is, that the same Being be both se/f- 
active and intelligent,) there could be no regular motion, such as is 
absolutely necessary to the forming and continuing of any of the com. 
pacted bodily substances, which our eyes behold every day ; yea, or of 
any whatsoever, suppose we their figures, their shapes, to be as rude, as 
deformed, and useless as we can imagine, much Jess such as the exqui 
site compositions, and the exact order of things in the universe do evidently 
require and discover.” (Howr’s Living Temple.) 

The proof that the original cause of al! things is an intelligent Bemg, 
alluded to above by Dr. S. Clarke, as exhibited bv the excellent variety, 
order, beauty, and wonderful contrivance and fitness of all things in the 
world to their proper and respective ends, has, from the copious and 
almost infinite illustration of which it 1s capable, been made a distinet 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 293 


dranch of theological science. It is the most obvious and popular, and 
theréfore the most useful argument in favour of the intelligence of that 
Being of infinite perfections, we call God; it is that to which the Holy 
Scriptures refer us for the confirmation of their own doctrine on this 
subject, and it has been constantly resorted to by all writers on this first 
principle of religion in every age. When it has been considered sepa- 
rately, and the proofs from nature have been largely given, it has beer 
designated “ Natural Theology,” and has given rise to many important 
works, equally entertaining, instructive, and convincing. (4) The basis, 
and indeed the plan, of Dr. Paley’s Natural Theology, are found in the 
third and following chapters of Howe’s Living Temple ; but the outline 
has been filled up, and the subject expanded by that able writer with 
great felicity of illustration, and acute and powerful argument. From 
the platform of Paley’s work, as it may be found in “the Living 
Temple,” I shall give a few extracts, which, though they appear in the 
*« Natural Theology” in a more expansive form, strengthened by addi- 
tional examples, and clothed in some of the instances given with a more 
correct philosophy, are not superseded. They bear upon the conclusion 
with an irresistible force, and are expressed with a noble eloquence, 
though in language a little antiquated in structure. 

“ As nothing can be produced without a cause, so no cause can work 
above or beyond its own capacity and natural aptitude. Whatsoever 
therefore is ascribed to any cause, above and beyond its ability, all that 
surplusage is ascribed to no cause at all: and so an effect, in that part 
at least, were supposed without a cause. And if it then follow when an 
effect is produced, that it had a cause; why doth it not equally follow, 
when an effect is produced, having manifest characters of wisdom and 
design upon it, that it had a wise and designing cause? If it be said, 
there are some fortuitous or casual (at least undesigned) productions, 
that look like the effects of wisdom and contrivance, but indeed are not, 
as the birds so orderly and seasonably making their nests, the bees 
their comb, and the spider its web, which are capable of no design, that 
exception needs to be well proved before it be admitted ; and that it be 
plainly demonstrated, both that these creatures are not capable of design, 
an | that there is not a universal, designing cause, from whose directive 
as well as operative influence, no imaginable effect or event can be 
exempted. In which case it will no more be necessary, that every 
creature that is observed steadily to work toward an end, should itself 
design and know it, than that an artificer’s tools should know what he 
is doing with them; but if they do not, it is plain he must. And surely 


(4) See Boyle on Final Causes, Ray’s Wisdom of God in the Creation, Der. 
nam’s Astro and Physico Theology, Sturm’s Reflections, Paley’s Naturai 
Theology, &c. 


294 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. (PART 


it lies upon them who so except, to prove in this case what they say 
and not to be so precarious as to beg, or think us se easy as to grant, so 
much, only because they have thought fit to say it, or would fain have 
it so, that is, that this or that strange event happened without any 
designing cause. . 

«“ But, however, [ would demand, of such as make this exception, 
whether they think there be any effect at all, to which a designing 
cause was necessary, or which they will judge impossible to have beeu 
otherwise produced than by the direction and contrivance of wisdom and 
counsel? [ little doubt but there are thousands of things, laboured and 
wrought by the hand of man, which they would presently, upon first 
sight, pronounce to be the effects of skill, and not of chance; yea, if 
they only considered their frame and shape, though they understood not 
their use and end, they would surely think at least some effects or other 
sufficient to argue to us a designing cause. And would they but soberly 
consider and resolve what characters or footsteps of wisdom and design 
might be reckoned sufficient to put us out of doubt, would they not, 
upon comparing, be brought to acknowledge that there are no where 
any more conspicuous and manifest, than in the things daily in view, 
that go ordinarily, with us, under the name of works of nature ? 
Whence it is plainly consequent, that what men commonly call un- 
versal nature, if they would be content no longer to lurk in the darkness 
of an’obscure and uninterpreted word, they must confess is nothing 
else but common providence, that is, the universal power which is every 
where active in the world, in conjunction with the unerring wisdom 
which guides and moderates all iis exertions and operations, or the 
wisdom which directs and governs that power. They must therefore 
see cause to acknowledge that an exact order and disposition of parts in 
very neat and elegant compositions, do plainly argue wisdom and skill in 
the contrivance ; only they will distinguish and say, It is so in the effects 
of art, but not of nature. What is this, but to deny in particular what 
they granted in general? To make what they have said signify nothing 
more than if they had said, such exquisite order of parts is the effect 
of wisdom, where it is the effect of wisdom; but it is not the effect of 
wisdom, where it is not the effect of wisdom ; and to trifle, instead of 
siving a reason why things are so? And whence take they their 
1 ivantage for this trifling, or do they hope to hide their folly in it, but 
(hat they think while what is meant by art is known, what is meuwt by 
nature cannot be known? But if it be not known, how can they tell 
but their distinguishing members are coincident, and run into one? 
Yea, and if they would allow the thing itself to speak, and the effect to 
confess and dictate the name of its own cause, huw plain is it that they 
do run into one; and that the expression imports uo impropriety, which 
we somewhere find in Cicero, The art of nature ; or rather, that nature 


SECOND.|] THEOLOGICAL INSTI1 UTES. 295 


is nething else but Divine art, at least in as near an analogy as between 
any things Divine and human? But, that this matter (even the thing 
itself, waiving for the present the consideration of names,) may be a little 
more narrowly discussed and searched into, let some curious piece of 
workmanship be offered to such a skeptic’s view, the making whereof 
he did not see, nor of any thing like it, and we will suppose him not 
told that this was made by the hand of any man, nor that he hath any 
thing to guide his. judgment about the way of its becoming what it is, 
but only his own view of the thing itself; and yet he shall presently, 
without hesitation, pronounce, this was the effect of much skill. I 
would here inquire, Why do you so pronounce? Or, What is the reason 
vf this your judgment? Surely he would not say he hath no reason at 
all for this so confident and unwavering determination; for then he 
would not be determined, but speak by chance, and be indifferent to say 
that or any thing else. Somewhat or other there must be, that, when 
he is asked, is this the effect of skill? shall so suddenly and irresistibly 
captivate him into an assent that it is so, that he cannot think otherwise. 
Nay, if a thousand men were asked the same question, they would as 
undoubtingly say the same thing; and then, since there is a reason for 
this judgment, what can be devised to be the reason, but that there are 
so manifest characters and evidences of skill in the composure, as are 
not attributable to any thing else? Now here I would farther demand, 
Is there any thing in this reason? Yea, or No? Doth it signify any 
thing, or is it of any value for the purpose for which it is alleged? 
Surely it is of very great, inasmuch as, when it is considered, it leaves 
it not in a man’s power to think any thing else; and what can be said 
more potently and efficaciously to demonstrate? But now, if this reason 
signify any thing, it signifies thus much; that wheresoever there are 
equal characters, and evidences of skill, a skilful agent must be 
acknowledged. And so it will, (in spite of cavil,) conclude universally, 
and abstractedly, from what we can suppose distinctly signified by the 
terms of art and nature, that whatsoever effect hath such, or equal 
characters of skill upon it, did proceed from a skilful cause. That is, 
that if this effect be said to be from a skilful cause, as having manifest 
characters of skill upon it, then every such effect, that hath equally 
manifest characters of skill upon it, must be, with equal reason, con. 
tluded to be from a skilful cause. 

« We will acknowledge skill to act, and wit to contrive, to be very 
distinguishable things, and in reference to some works, (as the making 
some curious automaton, or self-moving engine,) are commonly lodged 
in divers subjects; that is, the contrivance exercises the wit and 
invention of one, and the making, the manual skill and dexterity of 
others: but the manifest characters of both will be seen in the effect.—- 
Chat is, the curious elaborateness of each several part shows the latter, 


296 THEOLOGICAI INSTITUTES. IPART 


and the order and dependence of parts, and their conspiracy to one 
common end, the former. Each betokens design; or at least the smith 
or carpenter must be understood to design his own part, that is, to do as 
he was directed: both together do plainly bespeak an agent that knew 
what he did; and that the thing was not done by chance, or was not 
the casual product of only being busy at random, or making a careless 
stir, without aiming at any thing. And this, no man that is in his wits 
would, upon sight of the whole frame, more doubt to assent unto, 
than that two and two make four. And he would certainly be thought 
mad, that should profess to think that only by some one’s making a 
hustle among several small fragments of brass, iron, and wood, these 
parts happened to be thus curiously formed, and came together into this 
frame, of their own accord. 

“Or lest this should be thought to intimate too rude a representa- 
tion of their conceit who think this world to have fallen into this frame 
and order wherein it is, by the agitation of the moving parts, or 
particles of matter, without the direction of a wise mover; and that we 
may also make the case as plain as is possible to the most ordinary 
capacity, we will suppose (for instance) that one who had never before 
seen a watch, or any thing of that sort, hath now this little engine first 
offered to his view; can we doubt, but that he would, upon the mere 
sight of its figure, structure, and the very curious workmanship which 
we will suppose appearing in it, presently acknowledge the artificer’s 
hand? But if he were also made to understand the use and purpose for 
wnich it serves, and it were distinctly shown him how each thing con- 
tributes, and all things in this little fabric concur to this purpose, the 
exact measuring and dividing of time by minutes, hours, and months, he 
would certainly both confess and praise the great ingenuity of the first 
inventor. But now if a bystander, beholding him in this admiration, 
would undertake to show a profounder reach and strain of wit, ana 
should say, Sir, you are mistaken concerning the composition of this 
so much admired piece; it was not made or designed by the hand or 
skill of any one; there were only an innumerable company of little 
atoms or very small bodies, much too small to be perceived by your 
sense, that were busily frisking and plying to and fro about the place 
uf its nativity; and by a strange chance or a siranger fate, and the 
necessary laws of that motion which they were unavoidably put into, 
by a certain boisterous, undesigning mover, thev fell together into this 
smill bulk, so as to compose this very shape and figure, and with this 
game number and order of parts which you now behold: one squadron 
of these busy particles (little thinking what they were about) agreeing to 
make one wheel, and another a second, in that proportion which you see : 
others of them also falling and becoming fixed in so happy a posture 
and situation as to describe the: several figures by whic] the little mov. 


SECOND.| _ THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 297 


ng fingers point out the hours of the day, and the day of the month: 
and all conspired to fall together, each into its own place, in so lucky a 
juncture, as that the regular motion failed not to ensue which we see is 
now observed in it—what man is either so wise or so foolish, (for it is 
hard to determine whether the excess or the defect should best qualify 
him to be of this faith.) as to be capable of being made believe this piece 
of natural history? And if any one should give this account of the pro- 
duction of such a trifle, would he not be thought in jest? But if he 
persist, and solemnly profess that thus he takes it to have been, would 
he not be thought in good earnest mad? And let but any sober reason 
judge whether we have not unspeakably more madness to contend 
against in such as suppose this world, and the bodies of living creatures, 
to have fallen into this frame and orderly disposition of parts wherein 
they are, without the direction of a wise and designing cause? And 
whether there be not an incomparably greater number of most wild and 
arbitary suppositions in their fiction than in this? Beside the innumc 
rable supposed repetitions of the same strange chances all the world 
over; even as numberless, not only as productions, but as the changes 
that continually happen to all the things produced. And if the 
concourse of atoms could make this world, why not (for it is but little 
to mention such a thing as this,) a porch, or a temple, or a house, or a 
<aty, as Tully speaks, which were Jess operous, and much more easy 
performances ! 

“It is not to be supposed that all should be astronomers, anatomists, 
or natural philosophers, that shall read these lines; and therefore it is 
intended not to insist upon particulars, and to make as little use as is 
possible of terms that would only be agreeable to that supposition. But 
surely such general, easy reflections on the frame of the universe, and 
the order of parts in the bodies of all sorts of living creatures, as the 
meanest erdinary understanding is capable of, would soon discover 
incomparably greater evidence of wisdom and design in the contrivance 
of these, than in that of a watch ora clock. And if there were any 
whose understandings are but of that size and measure as to suppose 
that the whole frame of the heavens serves to no other purpose than tou 
be « f some such use to us mortals here on earth as that instrument ; if 
the: would but allow themselves leisure to think and consider, they might 
discern the most convincing and amazing discoveries of wise contri- 
vance and design (as well as the vastest might and power) in disposing 
things into so apt a subserviency to that meaner end; and that so exa-tt 
a knowledge is had thereby of times and seasons, days and years. as 
that the simplest idiot in a country may be able to tell you, when the 
light of the sun is withdrawn from his eyes, at what time it will return, 
and when it will look in at such a window, and when at the other ; and- 
pv what degrees his dys and nights shall either be increased o1 dimi 


298 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES [PART 


nished ; and what proportion of time he shall have for his labours in 
this season of the year, and what in tlfat; without the least suspicion or 
fear that it shall ever fall out otherwise. 

‘For let us suppose (what no man can pretend is more impossible, 
and what any man must confess is less considerable, than what our eyes 
daily see,) that in some part of the air near this earth, and within such 
limits as that the whole scene might be conveniently beheld at one view, 
there should suddenly appear a little globe of pure flaming light resem. 
bling that of the sun, and suppose it fixed as a centre to another body 
or moving about that other as its centre, (as this or that hypot.esis best 
pleases us,) which we could plainly perceive to be a proportionably 
little earth, beautified with little trees and woods, flowery fields and 
flowing rivulets, with larger lakes into which these discharge them. 
selves ; and suppose we see other planets all of proportionable bigness 
to the narrow limits assigned them, placed at their due distances, and 
playing about this supposed earth or sun, so as to measure their shorter 
and soon absolved days, months, and years, or two, twelve, or thirty 
years, according to their supposed circuits ;—would they not presently, 
and with great amazement, confess an intelligent contriver and maker 
of this whole frame, above a Posidonius or any mortal? And have we 
not in the present frame of things a demonstration of wisdom and coun- 
sel, as far exceeding that which is now supposed, as the making some 
toy or bauble to please a child is less an argument of wisdom than the 
contrivance of somewhat that is of apparent and universal use? Or if 
we could suppose this present state of things to have but newly begun, 
and ourselves pre-existent, so that we could take notice of the very 
passing of things out of horrid confusion into the comely order they are 
now in, would not this put the matter out of doubt? But might what 
would yesterday have been the effect of wisdom, better have been 
brought about by chance, five or six thousand years, or any longer time 
ago? It speaks not want of evidence in the thing, but want of consi- 
deration, and of exercising our understandings, if what were new would 
not only convince but astonish, and what is old, of the same importance, 
doth not so much as convince ! 

“And let them that understand any thing of the composition of a 
human body (or indeed of any living creature) but bethink themselves 
whether there be not equal contrivance, at least, appearing in the com. 
posure of that admirable fabric, as of any the most admired machite ur 
engine devised and made by human skill and wit. If we pitch upon 
any thing of known and commun use, as suppose again, a clock or 
watch, which is no sooner seen than it is acknu-vledged (as hath been 
said) the effect of a designing cause; will we not confess as much of 
the body of a man? Yea, what comparison &3 there, when in the 
structure of some one single member, as a hand, w foot, an eye, or ear, 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, 299 


there appears upon a diligent search, unspeakably greater curiosity, 
_ whether we consider the variety of parts, their exquisite figuration, or 
their apt disposition to the distinct uses and ends these members serve 
for, than is to be seen in any clock or watch? Concerning which 
uses of the several parts in man’s body, Galen, so largely discoursing 
in seventeen books, inserts on the leg, this epiphonema, upon the men. 
ior. of one particular instance of our most wise Maker’s provident 
care ;—‘ Unto whom (saith he) I compose these commentaries,’ (mean- 
ing his present work of unfolding the useful figuration of the human 
body,) ‘as ceriain hymns, or songs of praise, esteeming true piety to 
consist in this, that I first may know, and then declare to others, his 
wisdom, power, providence, and goodness, than in sacrificing to him 
many hecatombs: and in the ignorance whereof there is greatest 
impiety, rather than in abstaining from sacrifice.’ ‘Nor,’ (as he adds 
in the close of that excellent work,) ‘is the most perfect natural artifice 
to be seen in man only ; but you may find the like industrious design 
and wisdom of the Author, in any living creature which you shall 
please to dissect: and by how much the less it is, so much the greater 
admiration shall it excite in you; which those artists show, that describe 
some great thing (contractedly) in a very small space: as that person 
who lately engraved Phaeton carried in his chariot with his four horses 
upon a little ring—a most incredible sight! But there is nothing in 
mattersyof this nature more strange than in the structure of the leg of 
a flea.’ How much more might it be said of all its inward parts? 
‘ Therefore, (as he adds,) the greatest commodity of such a work accrues 
not to physicians, but to them who are studious of nature, namely, the 
knowledge of our Maker’s perfection, and that (as he had said a little 
above) it establishes the principle of the most perfect theology ; which 
theology is much more excellent than all medicine.’ 

‘It were too great an undertaking, and beyond the designed limits of 
this discourse, (though it would be to excellent purpose, if it could be 
dene without amusing terms, and in that easy, familiar way as to be 
capable of common use,) to pursue, and trace distinctly the prints and 
footsteps of the admirable wisdom which appears in the structure and 
frame of this outer temple. For even our bodies themselves are said to 
be the temples of the Holy Ghost, 1 Cor. vi, 19. And to dwell awhile 
in the contemplation and discovery of those numerous instances of most 
apparent, ungainsayable sagacity and providence which offer themselves 
to view in every part and particle of this fabric: how most commodi- 
ously all things are ordered in it! With how strangely cautious cir- 
cumspecuon and foresight not only destructive, but even (perpetually) 
vexatious and afflicting incongruities are avoided and provided against. 
to pose ourselves upon the sundry obvious questions that might be put: 
for the evincing of such provident foresight. As for instance, how 


300 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


comes it to pass that the several parts which we find to be double in out 
bodies, are not single only? Is this altogether by chance? That there 
are two eyes, ears, nostrils, hands, feet, &c : what a miserable, shiftless 
crea‘ure had man been, if there had only been allowed him one foot ! 
A seeing, hearing, talking, unmoving statue. That the hand is divided 
into fingers? ‘Those so conveniently situate, one in so fitly opposite a 
posture to the rest ? 

« And what, if some one pair or other of these parts had been unt. 
versally wanting? The hands, the feet, the eyes, the ears. How great 
a misery had it inferred upon mankind! and is it only a casualty. 
that it is not so? That the back bone is composed of so many joints, 
(twenty-four, beside those of that which is the basis and sustainer of 
the whole,) and is not all of a piece, by which stooping, or any motion 
of the head or neck, diverse from that of the whole body, had been 
altogether impossible ; that there is such variety and curiosity in the 
ways of joining the bones together in that, and other parts of the body, 
that in some parts they are joined by mere adherence of one to another, 
either with or without an intervening medium, and both these ways so 
diversely ; that others are fastened together by proper jointing, so as to 
suit and be accompanied with motion, either more obscure or more 
manifest, and this, either by a deeper, or more superficial insertion of 
one bone into another, or by a mutual insertion, and that in different 
ways; and that all these should be so exactly accommodated to the 
several parts and uses to which they belong and serve ;—was all this 
without design? Who that views the curious and apt texture of the 
eye, can think it was not made on purpose to see with; and the ear, 
upon the like view, for hearing, when so many things must concur that 
these actions might be performed by these organs, and are found to do 
so? Or who can think that the sundry little engines belonging to the 
eye were not made with design to move it upward, downward, to this 
side or that, or whirl it about as there should be occasion ; without 
which instruments and their appendages, no such motion could have 
been? Who, that is not stupidly perverse, can think that the sundry 
inward parts (which it would require a volume distinctly to speak 
of, and but to mention them and their uses would too unproportion. 
ably swell this part of this discourse) were not made purposely by a 
designing agent, for the ends they so aptly and constantly serve fir? 
The want of some one among divers whereof, or but a little misplacing 
or if things had been but a little otherwise than they are, had inferred 
an impossibility that such a creature as man could have subsisted, or 
been propagated upon the face of the earth. . As what if there had not 
been such a receptacle prepared as the stomach is, and so formed and 
placed as it Is, to receive and digest necessary nutriment? Had not the 
whole frame of man beside been in vain? Or what if the passage from 


SECOND. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 30) 


it duwnward had rot been made somewhat a little ascending, So as to 
detain a convenient time what it received, but that what was taken in 
were suddenly transmitted? It is evident the whole structure had been 
ruined as soon as made. What, (to instance in what seems so small a 
matter,) if that little cover had been wanting at the éntrance of that 
through which we breathe; (the depression whereof by the weight of 
what we eat or drink, shuts it, and prevents meat and drink from going 
down that way ;) had not unavoidable suffocation ensued? And who 
can number the instances that can be given beside? Now when there 
is a concurrence of so many things absolutely necessary, (concerning 
which the common saying is as applicable. more frequently wont to be 
applied to matters of morality,—‘ Goodness is from the concurrence of all 
causes, evil, from any defect,) each so aptly and opportunely serving 
its own proper use, and al], one common end, certainly to say that so 
manifold, so regular and stated a subserviency to that end, and the end 
itself, were undesigned, and things casually fell out thus, is to say we 
know cr care not what. 

“ We will only, before we close this consideration, concerning the 
mere frame of a human body, (which hath been so hastily and super- 
ficially proposed,) offer a supposition which is no more strange (ex- 
cluding the vulgar notion by which nothing is strange, but what is not 
common) than the thing itself as it actually is; namely, that the whole 
more external covering of the body of a man were made, instead of skin 
and flesh, of some very transparent substance, flexible, but clear as very 
crystal ; through which, and the other more inward (and as transparent) 
integuments, or enfoldings, we could plainly perceive the situation and 
order of all the internal parts, and how they each of them perform their 
distinct offices: if we could discern the continual motion of the blood, 
how it is conveyed, by its proper conduits, from its first source and 
fountain, partly downward to the lower entrails, (if rather it ascend not 
f-om thence, as at least what afterward becomes blood doth,) partly up- 
ward, to its admirable elaboratory, the heart; where it is refined and 
furnished with fresh vital spirits, and so transmitted thence by the dis- 
tinct vessels, prepared for this purpose: could we perceive the curious 
contrivance of those little doors, by which it is Jet in and out, on this 
side and on that; the order and course of its circulation, its most com- 
modious distribution by two social channels or conduit pipes, that every 
where accompany one another throughout the body: could we discern 
the curious artifice of the brain, its ways of purgation; and were it 
possible to pry into the secret chambers and receptacles of the Jess or 
more pure spirits there; perceive their manifold conveyances, and the 
rare texture of that net, commonly called the wonderful one : could we 
behold the veins, arteries, and nerves, all of them arising from their- 
proper and distinct originals , and their orderly dispersion for the most 


302 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTIS {PART 


part. by pairs, and conjugations, on this side and that, from the middle 
of the back; with the curiously wroight branches, which, supposing 
these to appear duly diversified, as so many more duskish strokes in this 
transparent frame they would be found to make throughout the whole 
of it; were every smaller fibre thus made at once discernible, especially 
those innumerable threads into which the spinal marrow is distributed 
at the bottom of the back: and could we, through the same medium, 
perceive those numerous little machines made to serve unto voluntary 
motions, (which in the whole body are computed, by some, to the number 
of four hundred and thirty, or thereabouts, or so many of them as, 
according to the present supposition, could possibly come in view,) and 
discern their composition, their various and elegant figures—round, 
square, long, triangular, &c, and behold them do their offices, and see 
how they ply to and fro, and work in their respect've places, as any 
motion is to be performed by them: were all these things, I say, thus 
made liable to an easy and distinct view, who would not admiringly cry 
out, How fearfully and wonderfully am I made? And sure there is no 
man sober, who would not, upon such a sight, pronounce that man mad, 
that should suppose such a production to have been a mere undesigned 
casualty. At least, if there be any thing in the world that may be 
thought to carry sufficiently convincing evidences in it, of its having 
been made industriously, and on purpose, not by chance, would not this 
composition, thus offered to view, be esteemed to do so much more? 
Yea, and if it did only bear upon it characters equally evidential, of 
wisdom and design, with what doth certainly so, though in the lowest 
degree, it were sufficient to evince our present purpose. For if one 
such instance as this would bring the matter no higher than to a bare 
equality, that would at least argue a maker of man’s body, as wise, and 
as properly designing as the artificer of any such slighter piece of work. 
manship, that mav vet, certainly, be concluded the effect of skill and 
design. And then, enough might be said, from other instances, to mani. 
fest him unspeakably superior. And that the matter would be brought, 
at least, to an equality upon the supposition now made, there can be no 
doubt, if any one be judge that hath not abjured his understanding and 
his eyes together. And what then, if we lay aside that supposition, 
(which only somewhat gratifies fancy and imagination,) doth that alte 
the case? Or is there the less of wisdom and contrivance expressed ini 
this work of forming man’s body, only for that it is not so easily and 
suddenly obvious to our sight? ‘Then we might with the same reason 
say, concerning some curious piece of carved work that is thought fit to 
be kept locked up in a cabinet, when we see it, that there was admirable 
workmanship shown in doing it; but as soon as it is again shut up in its 
repository, that there was none at all. Inasmuch as we speak of the 
oljective characters of wisdom and design, that are in the thing itself, 


SECOND. |] - THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 305 


(though they must some way or other come under our notice, otherwise 
we can be capabie of arguing nvthing from them, yet,) since we have 
sufficient assurance that there really are such characters in the structure 
of the body of man as have been mentioned, and a thousand more than 
have been thought necessary to be mentioned here; it is plain that the 
greater or less facility of finding them out, so that we be at a certainty 
that they are, (whether by the slower, or more gradual search of our 
awn eyes, or by relying upon the testimony of such as have purchased 
themselves that satisfiction by their own Jabour and diligence,) is merely 
accidental to the thing itself we are discoursing of; and neither adds 
to, nor detracts from the rational evidence of the present argument. Or 
if it do either, the more abstruse paths of Divine wisdom in this, as in 
other things, do rather recommend it the more to our adoration and 
reverence, than if every thing were obvious, and lay open to the first 
glance of a more careless eye. ~The things which we are sure (or may 
be, if we do not shut our eyes) the wise Maker of this world hath done, 
do sufficiently serve to assure us, that he could have done this also ; that 
is, have made everv thing in the frame and shape of our bodies con- 
spicuous in the way but now supposed, if he had thought it fit. He 
hath done greater things. And since‘he hath not thought that fit, we 
may be bold to say, the doing of it would signify more trifling, and less 
jesign. It gives us a more amiable and comely representation of the 
Being we are treating of, that his works are less for ostentation than 
use ; and that his wisdom and other attributes appear in them rather to 
the instruction of sober, than the gratification of vain minds. 

‘‘We may therefore confidently conclude, that the figuration of the 
human body carries with it as manifest, unquestionable evidences of de- 
sign, as any piece of human artifice, that most confessedlv in the judg- 
ment of any man, doth so; and therefore had as certainly a designing 
cause. We may challenge the world to show a disparity, unless it be 
that the advantage is inconceivably great on our side. For would not 
any one that hath not abandoned both his reason and his modesty, be 
ashamed to confess and admire the skill that is shown in making a 
statue, or the picture of a man, that (as one ingeniously says) is but the 
shadow of his skin, and deny the wisdom that appears in the composure 
of his body itself, that contains so numerous and so various engines and 
instruments for sundry purposes in it, as that it 1s become an art, and a 
very !a:dable one, but to discover and find out the art and skill that are 
shown in the contrivance and formation of them ? 

« And now if any should be so incurably blind as not to perceive, or | 
so perversely wilfil as not to acknowledge, an appearance of wisdom in 
the freme and figuration of the body of an animal (peculiarly of man} 
more then equal to what appears in any the most exquisite piece of - 
human arti:ce. and which no wit of man can ever fully imitate: although, 


304 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


as hath been said, an acknowledged equality would suffice to evince 2 
wise Maker thereof, yet because it is-the existence of God we are now 
speaking of, and that it is therefore not enough to evince, but to magnify 
the wisdom we would ascribe to him; we shall pass from the parts and 
frame to the consideration of the more principal powers and functions 
of terrestrial creatures; ascending from such as agree to the less } er 
fect order of these, to those of the more perfect, namely, of man him. 
self. And surely to have been the author of faculties that shal] enable 
to such functions, will evidence a wisdom that defies our imitation, and 
will dismay the attempts of it. | 

“We begin with that of growth. Many sorts of rare engines we ac- 
knowledge contrived by the wit of man, but who hath ever made one 
that could grow, or that had in it a self-improving power? A tree, an 
herb, a pile of grass, may upon this account challenge all the world to 
make such a thing; that is, to implant the power of growing into any 
thing to which it doth not natively belong, or to make a thing to which 
it doth. 

“ By what art would they make a seed? And which way would they 
inspire it with a seminal form? And they that think this whole globe of 
the earth was compacted by the casual (or fatal) coalition of particles 
of matter, by what magic would they conjure up so many to come toge- 
ther as to make one clod?' We vainly hunt with a lingering mind after 
miracles; if we did not more vainly mean by them nothing else but 
novelties, we are compassed about with such: and the greatest miracle 
is, that we see them not. You with whom the daily productions of 
nature (as you call it) are so cheap, see if you can do the like. Try 
your skill upon a rose. Yea, but you must have pre-existent matter? 
But can you ever prove the Maker of the world had so, or even defend 
the possibility of uncreated matter? And suppose they had the free grant 
of all the matter between the crown of their head and the moon, could 
they tell what to do with it, or how to manage it, so as to make it yreld 
them one single flower, that they might glory in as their own production ? 

‘‘ And what mortal man, that hath reason enough about him to be 
serious, and to think awhile, would not even be amazed at the miracle 
of nutrition? Or that there are things in the world capable of nourish. 
ment? Or who would attempt an imitation here. or not despair to per- 
form any thing like it? ‘That is, to make any nourishable thing. Are 
we not here infinitely outdone? Do we not see ourselves compassed 
about with wonders, and are we not ourselves such, in that we see, and 
are creatures, from all whose parts there is a continual defluxion, and 
yet that receive a constant gradual supply and renovation, by which 
they are continued in the same state? as the bush burning but not con- 
sumed. It is easy to give an artificial frame to a thing that shall gra. 
dually decay and waste till it be quite gone, and disappear. You could 


SECOND. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, 305 


"aise a structure of snow that would soon do that. But can your man 
al skill compose a thing that, like our bodies, shall be continually melt. 
ng away, and be continually repaired, through so long a tract of time 7 
Nay, but can you tell how it is done? You know in what method, ano 
by what instruments, food is received, concocted, separated, and so much 
as must serve for nourishment turned into chyle, and that into blood, first 
grosser, and then more refined, and that distributed into all parts for this 
purpose. Yea, and what then? Therefore are you as wise as your 
Maker? Could you have made such a thing as the stomach, a liver, a 
heart, a vein, an artery? Or are you so very sure what the digestive 
quality is? Or if you are, and know what things best serve to maintain, 
to repair, or strengthen it, who implanted that quality ? Both where it is 
so immediately useful, or in the other things you would use for the ser- 
vice of that? Or how, if such things had not been prepared to your hand, 
would you have devised to persuade the particles of matter into so useful 
- and happy a conjuncture, as that such a quality might result? Or (to 
speak more suitably to the most) how, if you had not been shown the | 
way, would you have thought it were to be done, or which way would 
you have gone to work, to turn meat and drink into flesh and blood? 

“And what shall we say of spontaneous motion, wherewith we fina 
also creatures endowed that are so mean and despicable in our eyes, 
(as well as ourselves,) that is, that so silly a thing as a fly, a gnat, &c, 
should have a power in it to move itself, or stop its own motion, at its 
own pleasure? How far have all attempted imitations in this kind fallen 
short of this perfection! And how much more excellent a thing is the 
smailest and most contemptible insect, than the most admired machine 
we ever heard or read of; (as Architas Tarentinus’s dove so anciently 
celebrated, or more lately Regiomontanus’s fly, or his eagle, or any the 
like ;) aot only as having this peculiar power, above any thing of this 
sort, but as having the sundry other powers beside, meeting in it, whereof 
these ure wholly Gestinta 1 

« And should we go on to instance farther in the several powers of 
sensation, both external and internal, the various instincts, appetitions, 
passions, sympathies, antipathies, the powers of memory, (and we might 
add of speech,) that we find the inferior orders of creatures either gene 
rally furnished with, or some of them, as to this last, disposed unto ; how 
should we even overdo the present business ; and too needlessly insult 
over human wit, (which we must suppose to have already yielded the 
cause,) in challenging it to produce and offer to view a hearing, seeing 
angine, that can imagine, talk, is capable of hunger, thirst, of desire, 
anger, fear, grief, &c, as its own creature, concerning which it may 
glory and say, I have done this ! 

“Ts it so admirable a performance, and so ungainsayable an evidence - 


of skill and wisdom, with much labour and long travail of mind ; a busy 
Vou. I. 20) 


306 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUT1'S. [PART 


restless agitation of working thoughts; the often renewal o: frustrated 
attempts: the varying of defeated trials, this way and that, at length to 
hit upon, and by much pains, and with a slow, gradual progress, by the 
use of who can tell how many sundry sorts of instruments or tools, by 
long hewing, hammering, turning, filing, to compose one only single 
machine of such a frame and structure as that by the frequent rein. 
forcement of a skilful hand, it may be capable of some (and that other. 
wise but a very short-lived) motion? And is it no argument, or effect 
of wisdom, so easily and certainly, without labour, error, or disappoint- 
ment, to frame both so infinite a variety of kinds, and so innumerable 
individuals of eyery such kind of living creatures, that not only with the 
greatest facility can move themselves with so many sorts of motion 
downward, upward, to and fro, this way or that, with a progressive or 
circular, a swifter or a slower motion, at their own pleasure ; but can 
also grow, propagate, see, hear, desire, joy, &c? [s this no work of wis- 
dom, but only either blind fate or chance? Of how strangely perverse 
and odd a complexion is that understanding, (if yet it may be called an 
understanding ) that can make this judgment? 

‘«‘ But because whatsoever comes under the name of cogitation, pro- 
perly taken, is assigned to some higher cause than mechanism; and 
that there are operations belonging to man, which lay claim to a reason- 
able soul, as the immediate principle and author of them, we have yet 
this farther step to advance, that is, to consider the most apparent evi- 
dence we have of a wise, designing agent, in the powers and nature of 
this more excellent, and, among other things, more obvious to our notice, 
the noblest of his productions. 

«And were it not for the slothful neglect of the most to study them. 
selves, we should not have need to recount unto men the common and 
well-known abilities and excellencies which peculiarly belong to their 
own nature. They might take notice, without being told, that first, as 
to their intellectual faculty, they have somewhat about them that can 
think, understand, frame notions of things; that can rectify or supply 
the false or defective representations which are made to them by their 
external senses and fancies; that can conceive of things far above thie 
reach and sphere of sense, the moral good or evil of actions or inclina- 
tions, and what there is in them of rectitude or pravity ; whereby they 
ean animadvert, and cast their eye inward upon themselves; observe 
the good or evil acts or inclinations, the knowledge, ignorance, dulness, 
vgour, tranquillity, trouble, and generally, the perfections or imperfec- 
‘ions of their own minds; that can apprehend the general natures of 
things, the future existence of what yet is not, with the future appear 
ance of that which, to us, as yet, appears not. 

“They may take notice of their power of comparing things, of dis 
cerning and making a judgment of thear agreements and disagreeraents 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. : 207 


their proportions and dispositions to one another; of affirming or deny- 
mg this or that, concerning such or such things; and of pronouncing, 
witn more or less confidence, concerning the truth or falsehood of such 
affirmations or negations. 

‘And moreover, of their power of arguing, and inferring one thing 
from another, so as from one plain and evident principle to draw forth 
a long chain of consequences, that may be discerned to be linked there- 
with. | 

“They have withal to consider the liberty and the large capacity of 
the human will, which, when it is itself. rejects the dominion of any other 
than the supreme Lord’s, and refuses satisfaction in any other than the 
supreme and most comprehensive good. 

“ And upon even so hasty and transient a view of a thing furnished 
with such powers and faculties, we have sufficient vccasion to bethink 
ourselves, How came such a thing as this into being; whence did it 
spring, or to what original doth it owe itself? More particularly we 
have here two things to be remembered—That, notwithstanding so high 
excellencies, the soul of man doth yet appear to be a caused being, that 
some time had a beginning—That by them it is sufficiently evident, that 
it owes itself to a wise and intelligent cause.” 

The instance of a watch, chosen by Howe for the illustration of his 
argument, that evidences of des7gn, in any production, are evidences of 
a designing cause ; is thus strikingly amplified and applied by Paley to 
refute the leading Atheistic theories :—‘‘ The mechanisin of the watch 
being once observed and understood, the inference, we think, is inevitable, 
that the watch must have had a maker; that there must have existed, 
at some time and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who 
formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who com- 
prehended its construction and designed its use. 

“ Nor would it, | apprehend, weaken the conclusion, that we had never 
seen a watch made; that we had never known an artist capable of mak. 
ing one; that we were altogether incapable of executing such a piece 
of workmanship ourselves, or of understanding in what manner it was 
performed: all this being no more than what is true of some exquisite 
remains of ancient art, of some lost arts, and, to the generality of man- 
hind, of the more curious productions of modern manufacture. Does one 
man in a million know how oval frames are turned? Ignorance of this 
kind exalts our opinion of the unseen and unknown artist’s skill, if he be 
unseen and unknown, but raises no doubt in our minds of the existence 
and agency of such an artist, at some former time, and in some place or 
other. Nor can | perceive that it varies at all the inference, whether the 
question arise concerning a human agent, or concerning an agent of a dif- 
erent species, or an agent possessing, in some respects, a different nature. “ 

«¢ Neither, secondly, would it invalidate our conclusion, that the watch 


808 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. ' [PART 


sometimes went wrong, or that it seldom went exactly right. The pur- 
pose of the machinery, the design, and the designer, might be evident, 
and in the case supposed would be evident, in whatever way we accounted 
for the irregularity of the movement, or whether we could account for 
it or not. It is not necessary that a machine be perfect, in order to 
show with what design it was made : still less necessary, where the only 
question is, whether it were made with any design at all. 

«Nor, thirdly, would it bring any uncertainty into the argument, if 
there were a few parts of the watch, concerning which we could not 
discover, or had not yet discovered in what manner they conduced to 
the general effect ; or even some parts concerning which we could not 
ascertain, whether they conduced to that effect in any manner whatever. 
For, as to the first branch of the case, if, by the loss or disorder, or decay 
of the parts in question, the movement of the watch were found in fact 
to be stopped, or disturbed, or retarded, no doubt would remain in our 
minds as to the utility or intention of these parts, although we should be 
unable to investigate the manner according to which or the connection by 
which, the ultimate effect depended upon their action or assistance ; and 
the more complex is the machine, the more likely is this obscurity to 
arise. Then, as to the second thing supposed, namely, that there were 
parts which might be spared without prejudice to the movement of the 
watch, and that we had proved this by experiment,—these superfluous 
parts, even if we were completely assured that they were such, would 
not vacate the reasoning which we had instituted concerning other parts. 
The indication of contrivance remained, with respect to them, nearly as 
it was before. 

‘“‘ Nor, fourthly, would any man in his senses think the existence of the 
watch, with its various machinery, accounted for by being told that it was 
one out of possible combinations of material forms; that whatever he 
had found, in the place where he had found the watch, must have con- 
tained some internal configuration or other; and that this configuration 
might be the structure now exhibited, namely, of the works of a watch, 
as well as a different structure. 

“ Nor, fifthly, would it yield his inquiry more satisfaction to be answered, 
that there existed in things a principle of order, which had disposed the 
parts of the watch into their present form and situation. He never knew 
a watch made by the principle of order ; nor can he even form to him. 
self an idea of what is meant by a principle of order, distinct from the 
intelligence of the watchmaker. 

“ Sixthly, he would be surprised to hear, that the mechanism of 
the watch was no proof of contrivance, only a motive to induce the mind 
to think so. 

‘*‘ And not less surprised to be informed, that the watch in his hand 
was nothing more than the result of the laws of metallic nature. It is 


SECOND.} THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, 309 


a perversion of language to assign any law, as the efficient, operative 
cause of any thing. A law presupposes an agent; for it is only the 
mode according to which an agent proceeds: it implies a power; for 
it 1s the order according to which that power acts. Without this agent, 
without this power, which are both distinct from itself, the law does 
nothing,—is nothing. The expression ‘ the law of metallic nature,’ may 
sound strange and harsh to a philosophic ear, but it seems quite as justi- 
fiable as some others which are more familiar to him, such as ‘the law 
of vegetable nature,’ ‘the law of animal nature,’ or indeed as ‘ the law 
of nature’ in general, when assigned as the cause of phenomena, in 
exclusion of agency and power; or when it is substituted into the place 
of these. 

“‘ Neither, lastly, would our observer be driven out of his conclusion 
or from his confidence in its truth, by being told that he knew nothing at 
all about the matter. He knows enough for his argument; he knows 
the utility of the end; he knows the subserviency and adaptation of the 
means to the end. ‘These points being known, his ignorance of other 
points, his doubts concerning other points, affect not the certainty of his 
reasoning. ‘lhe consciousness of knowing little need not beget a dis- 
trust of that which he does know. 

“‘ Suppose, 10 the next place, that the person who found the watch 
should, after some time, discover that, in addition to all the properties which 
ne had hitherto observed in it, it possessed the unexpected property of pro- 
ducing, in the course of its movement, another watch like itself; (the 
thing is conceivable ;) that it contained within it a mechanism, a system 
of parts, a mould, for instance, or a complex adjustment of lathes, files, 
and other tools, evidently and separately calculated for this purpose ; let 
us inquire what effect ought such a discovery to have upon his former 
conclusion. 

“The first effect would be to increase his admiration of the contrivance, 
and his conviction of the consummate skill of the contriver. Whether he 
regarded the object of the contrivance, the distinct apparatus, the intri- 
cate, yet in many parts intelligible, mechanism, by which it was carried 
on, he would perceive in this new observation, nothing but an additional 
reason for doing what he had already done ; for referring the construc- 
tion of the watch to design and to supreme art. If that constiuction 
without this property, or, which is the same thing, before this property 
had been noticed, proved intention and art to have been employed about 
.t; still more strong would the proof appear, when he came to the know. 
ledge of this farther property, the crown and perfection of all the rest. 

“He would reflect, that though the watch before hin were, in some 
sense, the maker of the watch which was fabricated in the course of its 
movements, yet it was in a very different sense from that in which a 
carpenter, for instance, is the maker of a chair; the author of its con 


310 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PAR? 


trivance, the cause of the relation of its parts to their use. With respect 
to these, the first watch was no cause at all to the second; in no such 
sense as this was it. the author of the constitution and order, either of the 
parts which the new watch contained, or of the parts by the aid and 
instrumentality of which it was produced. We might possibly say, but 
with great latitude of expression, that a stream of water ground com : 
but 10 latitude of expression would allow us to say, no stretch of conjec- 
ture could Jead us to think, that the stream of water built the mill, though 
it were too ancient for us to know who the builder was.. What the 
stream of water does in the affair is neither more nor less than this: by 
the application of an unintelligent impulse to a mechanism previously 
arranged, arranged independently of it, and arranged by intelligence, an 
effect is produced, namely, the corn is ground. But the effect results 
from the arrangement. ‘The force of the stream cannot be said to be 
the cause or author of the effect, still less of the arrangement. Under- 
standing and plan in the formation of the mill were not the less necessary, 
for any share which the water has in grinding the corn: yet is this share 
the same as that which the watch would have contributed to the produc- 
tion of the new watch, upon the supposition assumed in the last section. 
Therefore, 

“Though it be now no longer probable, that the individual watch 
which our observer had found, was made immediately by the hand of an 
artificer, yet doth not this alteration in any wise affect the inference, 
‘hat an artificer had been orginally employed and concerned in the 
production. ‘The argument from design remains as it was. Marks of 
design and contrivance are no more accounted for now than they were 
before. In the same thing, we may ask for the cause of different pro- 
perties. We may ask for the cause of the colour of a body, of its hard- 
ness, of its heat; and these causes may be all different. We are now 
asking for the cause of that subserviency to a use, that relation to an 
end which we have marked in the watch before us. No answer is 
given to this question by telling us that a preceding watch produced it. 
There cannot be design without a designer; contrivance without a con- 
triver; order without choice ; arrangement without: any thing capable 
of arranging ; subserviency and relation to a purpose, without that which 
eald intend a purpose ; means suitable to an end, and executing their 
office in accomplishing that end, without the end ever having been con. 
'-mplated, or the means accommodated to it. Arrangement, disposition 
of parts, subserviency of means to an end, relation of instruments to w 
use, imply the. presence of intelligence and mind. No one, therefore, 
can rationally believe, that the insensible, inanimate watch, from which 
the watch before us issued, was the proper cause of the mechanism we so 
much admire in it ; cculd be truly said to have constructed the instrument, 
disposed its parts, assigned their office, determined their order. action 


bECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 3) 


and mutual dependency, combined their several motions into one 
result, and that also a result connected with the utilities of other beings. 
All these properties, therefore, are as much unaccounted for as they 
were before. 

“Nor is any thing gained by running the difficulty farther back, -hat | 
is, by supposing the watch before us to have been produced from another 
watch, that from a former, and so on indefinitely. Our going back ever 
so far brings us no nearer to the least degree of satisfaction upon the 
subject. Contrivance is still unaccounted for. We still want a con- 
triver. A designing mind is neither supplied by this supposition, nor 
dispensed with. If the difficulty were diminished the farther we went 
back, by going back indefinitely we might exhaust it. And this is the 
only case to which this sort of reasoning applies. Where there is a 
tendency, or, as we increase the number of terms, a continual approach 
toward a limit, there, by supposing the number of terms to be what is 
called infinite, we may conceive the limit to be attained: but where there is 
no such tendency or approach, nothing is effected by lengthening the 
series. There is no difference as to the point in question, (whatever 
there may be as to many points,) between one series and another; 
between a series which is finite, and a series which is infinite. A chain 
composed of an infinite number of links, can no more support itself, than 
a chain composed of a finite number of links. And of this we are 
assured, (though we never can have tried the experiment,) because, by 
increasing the number of links, from ten, for instance, to a hundred, from 
a hundred to a thousand, &c, we make not the smallest approach, we 
observe not the smallest tendency toward self support. There is no 
difference in this respect (yet there may be a great difference in several 
respects) between a chain of a greater or less length, between one chain 
and another, between one that is finite and one that is infinite. This 
very much resembles the case before us. The machine, which we are 
inspecting, demonstrates, by its construction, contrivance, and design. 
Contrivance must have had a contriver; design a designer, whether the 
machine immediately proceeded from another machine or not. That 
circumstance alters not the case. That other machine may, in like 
manner, have proceeded from a former machine: nor does that alter 
the case : contrivance must have hada contriver. That former one from 
one preceding it: uo alteration still: a contriver is still necessary. No 
tendency is perceived, no approach toward a diminution of this necessity. 
It is the same with any and every succession of these machines ; a suc- 
cession of ten, of a hundred, of a thousand ; with one series as with ano- 
ther ; aseries which is finite as with a series which is infinite. In whatever 
other respects they may differ, in this they do not. In all equally, con. 
‘rivance and design are unaccounted for. 

« The question is not simply, How came the first watch mto exist. 


312 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. : [PART 


ence? which question, it may be pretended, is done away vy supposing 
the series of watches thus produced from one another to have been infi- 
nite, and consequently to have had no such first, for which it was neces- 
sary to provide a cause. This perhaps would have been nearly the 
state of the question, if nothing had been before us but an unorganized, 
unmechanized substance, without mark or indication of contrivance. It 
might be difficult to show that such substance could not have existed 
from eternity, either in succession, (if it were possible, which I think .t 
is not, for unorganized bodies to spring from one another,) or by indi- 
vidual perpetuity. But that is not the question now. To suppose it to 
be so, is to suppose that it made no difference whether we had found a 
watch or a stone. As it is, the metaphysics of that question have no 
place ; for in the watch which we are examining, are seen contrivance, 
design ; an end, a purpose; means for the end, adaptation to the pur 
pose. And the question, which irresistibly presses upon our thoughts, 
is, whence this contrivance and design? ‘The thing required is the in- 
tending mind, the adapting hand, the intelligence by which that hand 
was directed. This question, this demand, is not shaken off, by increas- 
ing a number or succession of substances, destitute of these properties ; 
nor the more by increasing that number to infinity. If it be said, that, 
upon the supposition of one watch being produced from another in the 
course of that ether’s movements, and by means of the mechanism 
within it, we have a cause for the watch in my hand, viz. the watch 
from which it proceeded, I deny, that for the design, the contrivance, 
the suitableness of means to an end, the adaptation of instruments to a 
use, (all which we discover in the watch,) we have any cause whatever. 
It is in vain, therefore, to assign a series of such causes, or to allege 
that a series may be carried back to infinity ; for I do not admit that we 
have yet any cause at all of the phenomena, still less any series of 
causes either finite or infinite. Here is contrivance, but no contriver ; 
proofs of design, but no designer. 

“ Our observer would farther also reflect, that the maker of the watch 
before him was. in truth and reality, the maker of every watch pro- 
duced from it; there being no difference (except that the latter mani- 
fests a more exquisite skill) between the making of another watch with 
his own hands, by the mediation of files, lathes, chisels, &c, and the 
_ disposing, fixing, and inserting of these instruments, or of others equiva. 
lent to them, in the body of the watch already made, in such a manner, 
as to form a new watch in the course of the movements which he had 
given to the old one. It is only working by one set of tools instead of 
another. 

«The conclusion which the first examination of the watch, of its 
works, construction and movement, suggested, was, that it must have 
had, for the cause and author of that construction, an artificer, who 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 313 


understood its mechanism, and designed its use. This conclusion is in. 
vincible. A second examination presents us with a new discovery. The 
watch is found, in the course of its movement, to produce another watch, 
similar to itself: and not only so, but we perceive in it a system of or- 
ganization, separately calculated for that purpose. What effect would 
this discovery have, or ought it to have, upon our former inference ? 
What, as hath already been said, but to increase, beyond measure, our 
admiration of the skill, which had been employed in the formation of 
such a machine? Or shall it, instead of this, all at once turn us round 
to an opposite conclusion, viz. that no art or skill whatever has been 
concerned in the business, although all other evidences of art and skill 
remain as they were, and this last and supreme piece of art be now 
added to the rest? Can this be maintained without absurdity? Yet this 
is Atheism.” 

If the argument is so powerful, when a work of art merely is made 
its basis ; it is rendered much more convincing when it is transferred to 
the works of nature; because ends more singular are, in an infinite 
number of instances, there proposed, and are accomplished by contri- 
vances much more curious and difficult. In the quotation above given 
from Howe, the eye, the parts of the body which are double, and the 
construction of the spine, are adduced among others as striking in- 
stances of a contrivance superior to the art of man, and as evidently 
denoting forethought and plan, the attributes not of zntelligence only, but 
of an intelligence of an infinitely superior order. ‘These instances have 
been admirably wrought up by the master hand which furnished the last 
quotation. 

We begin with the human eye. 

«The contrivances of nature surpass the contrivances of art, in the 
complexity, subtilty, and curiosity of the mechanism ; and still more, if 
possible, do they go beyond them in number and variety ; yet in a mul- 
titude of cases, are not less evidently mechanical, not less evidently 
contrivances, not less evidently accommodated to their end, or suited to 
their office, than are the most perfect productions of human ingenuity. 

«“T know no better method of introducing so large a subject, than that 
of comparing a single thing with a single thing; an eye, for example, 
with a telescope. As far as the examination of the instrument goes, 
there is precisely the same proof that the eye was made for vision, as 
there is that the telescope was made for assisting it. They are made 
upon the same principles ; both being adjusted to the laws by which the 
transmission and refraction of rays of light are regulated. I speak not 
of the origin of the laws themselves ; but such laws being fixed, the con- 
struction, in both cases, is adapted to them. For instance ; these laws 
require, in order to produce the same effect, that the rays of light, in’ 
passing from water into the eye, should be refracted by a more convex 


314 THEOLOGICA]. INSTITUTES. [PART 


surface than when it passes ow of air into the eye. Accordingly we 
find, that the eye of a fish, in that part of it called the crystalline lens, 
is much rounder than the eye of terrestrial animals. What plainer ma- 
nifestation of design cam there be than this difference? What could a 
mathematical instrument maker have done more, to show his knowledge 
of his principle, his application of that knowledge, his suiting of his 
means to his end; I will not say, to display the compass or excellency 
of his skill and art, for in these all comparison is indecorous, but to 
testify counsel, choice, consideration, purpose ? 

«To some it may appear a difference sufficient to destroy all simili- 
tude between the eye and the telescope, that the one is a perceiving 
organ, the other an unperceiving instrument. ‘The fact is, that they 
are both instruments. And, as to the mechanism, at least as to mechan- 
ism being employed, and even as to the kind of it, this circumstance 
varies not the analogy at all: for observe, what the constitution of the 
eye is. It is necessary, in order to produce distinct vision, that an 
image or picture of the object be formed at the bottom of the eye. 
Whence this necessity arises, or how the picture is connected with the 
sensation, or contributes to it, it may be difficult, nay, we will confess, 
if you please, impossible for us to search out. But the present question 
is not concerned in the inquiry. It may be true, that, in this, and in 
other instances, we trace mechanical contrivance a certain way; and 
that then we come to something which is not mechanical, or which is 
inscrutable. But this affects not the certainty of our investigation, as 
far as we have gone. The difference between an animal and an auto- 
matic statue, consists in this,—that in the animal, we trace the mechan- 
ism to a certain point, and then we are stopped ; either the mechanism 
becoming too subtile for our discernment, or something else beside the 
known laws of mechanism taking place ; whereas, in the automaton, for 
the comparatively few motions of which it is capable, we trace the me- 
chanism throughout. But, up to the limit, the reasoning is as clear and 
certain in the one case as the other. In the example before us, it is a 
matter of certainty, because it is a matter which experience and obser- 
vation demonstrate, that the formation of an image at the bottom of the 
eye is necessary to perfect vision. The image itself can be shown. 
Whatever affects the distinctness of the image, affects the distinctness 
of the vision. The formation then of such an image being necessary 
(no matter how) to the sense of sight, and to the exercise of that sense, 
the apparatus by which it is formed is constructed and put together, not 
only with infinitely more art, but upon the self-same principles of art, 
as in the telescope or camera obscura. The perception arising from 
the image may be laid out of the question; for the production of the 
image, these are instruments of the same kind. The end is the same ; 
the means are the same. ‘T'he purpose in both is alike; the contrivance 


SBUOND., THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 315 


for accomplishing that purpose is in both alike. The lenses of the tele. | 
scope, and the humours of the eye, bear a complete resemblance to one 
another, in their figure, their position, and in their power over the rays 
of light, viz. in bringing each pencil to a point at the right distance from 
the lens; namely, in the eye, at the exact place where the membrane 
is spread to receive it. How is it possible, under circumstances of sucr. 
¢.ose affinity, and under the operation of an equal evidence, to exclude 
contrivance from the one; yet to acknowledge the proof of contrivance 
having been employed, as the plainest and clearest of all propositions in 
the other? 

“The resemblance between the two cases is still more accurate, and 
obtains in more points than we have yet represented, or than we are, on 
the first view of the subject, aware of. In dioptric telescopes there is 
an imperfection of this nature. Pencils of light, in passing through glass 
lenses, are separated into different colours, thereby tinging the object, 
especially the edges of it, as if it were viewed through a prism. To 
correct this inconvenience had been Jong a desideratum in the art. At 

-last it came into the mind of a sagacious optician, to inquire how this 
matter was managed in the eye; in which there was exactly the same 
difficulty to contend with as in the telescope. His observation taught 
him, that, in the eye, the evil was cured by combining together lenses 
composed of different substances, i. e. of substances which possessed 
different refracting powers. Our artist borrowed from thence his hint ; 
and produced a correction of the defect by imitating, in glasses made 
from different materials, the effects of the different humours through 
which the rays of light pass before they reach the bottom of the eye. 
Could this be in the eye without purpose, which suggested to the opti- 
cian the only effectual means of attaining that purpose ? 

“But farther; there are other points, not so much perhaps of strict 
resemblance between the two, as of superiority of the eye over the 
telescope ; yet of a superiority, which, being founded in the laws that 
regulate both, may furnish topics of fair and just comparison. Two 
things were wanted to the eye, which were not wanted, at least in the 
same degree, to the telescope ; and these were, the adaptation of the 
organ, first, to different degrees of light; and secondly, to the vast diver. 
sity of distance at which objects are viewed by the naked eye, viz. from 
a few inches to as many miles. ‘These difficulties present not them- 
3elves ‘o the maker of the telescope. He wants all the light he can get ; 
and he never directs his instrument to objects near at hand. In the eye, 
both these cases were to be provided for; and for the purpose of pro- 
viding for them a subtile and appropriate mechanism is introduced. 

“In order to exclude excess of light, when it is excess ve, and to ren- 
der objects visible under obscurer degrees of it, when no more can be 
had, the hole or aperture in the eye, through which the light enters, is 


316 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


_so furmed, as to contract or dilate itself for the purpose of admitting a 
greater or less number of rays at the same time. The chamber of the 
eye is a camera obscura, which, when the light is too small, can enlarge 
its opening; when too strong, can again contract it ; and that without 
any other assistance than that of its own exquisite machinery. It is 
farther also, in the human subject, to be observed, that this hole in the 
eye, which we call the pupil, under all its different dimensiuns, retains 
its exact circular shape. This is a structure extremely artificial. Let 
an artist only try to execute the same. He will find that his threads 
and strings must be disposed with great consideration and contrivance, 
to make a circle, which shall continually change its diameter, yet pre- 
serve its form. This is done in the eye by an application of fibres, 
l. e. of strings, similar, in their position and action, to what an artist 
would and must employ, if he had the same piece of workmanship to 
perform. 

“The second difficulty which has been stated, was the, suiting of the 
same organ to the perception of objects that lie near at hand, within a 
few inches, we will suppose, of the eye, and of objects which were placed 
at a considerable distance from it, that, for example, of as many fur- 
longs: (I speak in both cases of the distance at which distinct vision 
can be exercised.) Now this, according to the principles of optics, that 
is, according to the laws by which the transmission of light is regulated 
(and these laws are fixed,) could not be done without the organ itself 
undergoing an alteration, and receiving an adjustment that might cor- 
respond with the exigency of the case, that is to say, with the differen. 
inclination to one another under which the rays of light reached it. 
Rays issuing from points placed at a small distance from the eye, and 
which consequently must enter the eye in a spreading or diverging 
order, cannot, by the same optical instrument in the same state, be 
brought to a point, 1. e. be made to form an image, in the same place 
with rays proceeding from objects situated at a much greater distance, 
and which rays arrive at the eye in directions nearly, and physically 
speaking, parallel. It requires a rounder lens to do tt. The point of 
concourse behind the lens must fall critically upon the retina, or the 
vision is confused; yet, other things remaining the same, this point, 
by the immutable properties of light, is carried farther back, when the 
rays proceed from a near object, than when they are sent from one that 
isremote. A person who was using an optical instrument, would manage 
this matter by changing, as the occasion required, his lens or his tele. 
scope ; or by adjusting the distances of his glasses with his hand or his 
screw: but how is it to be managed in the eye?) What the alteration 
was, or in what part of the eye it took place, or by what means it was 
effected, (for, if the known laws which govern the refraction of light be 
maintained, some alteration in the state of the organ there must be,) had 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, 317 


long formed a subject of inquiry and conjecture. The change, though 
sufficient for the purpose, is so minute as to elude ordinary observation. 
Some very late discoveries, deduced from a laborious and most accurate 
inspection of the structure and operation of the organ, seem at length to 
have ascertained the mechanical alteration which the parts of the eye 
undergo. It is found, that by the action of certain muscles, called the 
straight muscles, and which action is the most advantageous that could 
be imagined for the purpose,—it is found, I say, that, whenever the eye 
is directed to a near object, three changes are produced in it at tne 
same time, all severally contributing to the adjustment required. The 
cornea, or outermost coat of the eye, is rendered more round and pro- 
minent; the crystalline lens underneath is pushed forward; and the 
axis of vision, as the depth of the eye is called, is elongated. These 
changes in the eye vary its power over the rays of light in such a man 
ner and degree as to produce exactly the effect which is wanted, viz. 
the formation of an image upon the retina, whether the rays come to the 
eye in a state of divergency, which is the case when the object is near 
to the eye, or come parallel to one another, which is the case when the 
object is placed at a distance. Can any thing be more decisive of con- 
trivance than this is? The most secret Jaws of optics must have been 
known to the author of a structure endowed with such a capacity of 
change. It is, as though an optician, when he had a nearer object to 
view, should rectify his instrument by putting in another glass, at the 
same time drawing out also his tube to a different length. 

‘In considering vision as achieved by the means of an image formed 
at the bottom of the eye, we can never reflect without wonder upon the 
smallness, yet correctness, of the picture, the subtilty of the touch, the 
fineness of the lines. A landscape of five or six square leagues is 
brought into a space of half an inch diameter; yet the multitude of ob. 
jects which it contains are all preserved; are all discriminated in their 
magnitudes, positions, figures, colours. ‘The prospect from Hampstead 
hill is compressed into the compass of a sixpence, yet circumstantially 
represented. A stage coach travelling at its ordinary speed for half an 
hour, passes in the eye, only over one twelfth of an inch, yet is this change 
of place in the image distinctly perceived throughout its whole progress ; 
for it is only by means of that perception that the motion of the coac 
itse'f is made sensible to the eye. If any thing can abate our admira 
tion of the smallness of the visual tablet compared with the extent of 
vision, it is a reflection which the view of nature leads us, every hour, 
to make, viz. that in the hands of the Creator, great arid little are 
nothing.” 

On the parts of the body which are double, adduced py Howe, as 
proofs of contrivance, our author farther remarks :— 

«* The human. or indeed the animal frame, considered as a mass of 


318 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


asseinblage, exhibits in its composition fhree properties, which have 
long struck my mind, as indubitable evidences, not only of design, but of 
a great deal of attention and accuracy in prosecuting the design. 

“The first is, the exact correspondency of the two sides of the same 
animi!: we right hand answering to the left, leg to leg, eye to eye, one 
side oi the countenance to the other; and with a precision, to imitate 
which, in any tolerable degree, forms one of the difficulties of statuary, 
and requires, on the part of the artist, a constant attention to this pro- 
perty of his work, distinct from every other. 

“It :s the most difficult thing that can be, to get a wig made even; 
yet how seldom is the face awry? And what care is taken that it should 
not be so, the anatomy of its bones demonstrates. The upper part of 
the face is composed of thirteen bones, six on each side, answering each 
to each, and the thirteenth without a fellow, in the middle ; the lower 
part of the face is in like manner composed of six bones, three on each 
side, respectively corresponding, and the lower jaw in the centre. In 
building an arch, could more be done in order to make the curve true, 
i. e. the parts equidistant from the middle, alike in figure and position ? 

‘<The exact resemblance of the eyes, considering how compounded 
this organ is in its structure, how various and how delicate are the shades 
of colour with which its iris is tinged, how differently, as to effect upon 
appearance, the eye may be mounted in its socket, and how differently in 
different heads eyes actually are set, is a property of anima! bodies much 
to be admired. Of ten thousand eyes, I don’t know that it would be 
possible to match one, except with its own fellow ; or to distribute them 
into suitable pairs by any other’selection than that which obtains. 

“The next circumstance to be remarked is, that while the cavities of 
the body are so configurated, as, externally, to exhibit the most exact cor. 
respondency of the opposite sides, the contents of these cavities have no 
such correspondency. A line drawn down the middle of the breast 
divides the thorax into two sides exactly similar ; yet these two sides 
invlose very different contents. ‘The heart lies on the left side; a lobe 
of the lungs on the right; balancing each other, neither in size nor 
shupe. ‘The same thing holds of the abdomen. The liver lies on the 
right side, without any similar viscus opposed to it on the left. The 
spleen indeed is situated over against the liver; but agreeing with the: 
liver neither in bulk nor form. ‘There is no equipollency betweer 
these. ‘The stomach is a vessel, both irregular in its shape, and oblique 
in its position. ‘The foldings and doublings of the intestines do not pre 
‘sent a parity of sides. Yet that symmetry which depends upon the 
correlation of the sides, is externally preserved throughout the whole 
trunk ; and is the more remarkable in the lower parts of it, as the mte- 
guments are soft ; and the shape, consequently, is not, as the thorax is 
by its ribs, reduced by natural stays. It is evident. therefore that the 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 319 


exfernal proportion. does not arise from any. equality in the shape or 
pressure of the internal contents. What is it indeed but a correction of 
inequalities? an adjustment, by mutual compensation, of anomalous 
forms into a regular congeries? the effect, in a word, of artful, and, if 
we might be permitted so to speak, of studied collocation ? 

“Similar also to this is the third observation; that an internal ine- 
qua.ity in the feeding vessels ix so managed, as to produce no inequality 
iu parts which were intended to correspond. The right arm answers 
accurately to the left, both in size and shape; but the arterial branches, 
which supply the two arms, do not go off from their trunk, in a pair, in 
the same manner, at the same place, or at the same angle. Under 
which want of similitude, it is very difficult to conceive how the same 
quantity of blood should be pushed through each artery ; yet the result 
is right; the two limbs which are nourished by them perceive no differ- 
ence of supply, no effects of excess or deficiency. 

“Concerning the difference of manner, in which the subclavian and 
carotid arteries, upon the different sides of the body, separate themselves 
from the aorta, Cheselden seems to have thought, that the advantage 
which the left gain by going off at a much acuter angle than the right, 
is made up to the right by their going off together in one branch. It 
is very possible that this may be the compensating contrivance ; and if 
it be so, how curious, how hydrostatical !” 

The construction of the spine, another of Howe’s illustrations, is thus 
exemplified :— . . 

“The spine or back bone is a chain of joints of very wonderful con- 
struction. Various, difficult, and almost inconsistent offices were to be 
executed by the same instrument. It was to be firm, yet flexible : now 
[ know of no chain made by art, which is both these; for by firmness 
[ mean, not only strength, but stability ; firm, to support the erect posi- 
tion of the body; flexible, to allow of the bending of the trunk in all 
degrees of curvature. It was farther also, which is another, and quite 
4 distinct purpose from the rest, to become a pipe or conduit for the 
safe conveyance from the brain of the most important fluid of the ani- 
mal frame, that, namely, upon which all voluntary motion depends, the 
spinal marrow ; a substance, not only of the first necessity to action, if 
not to life, but of a nature so delicate and tender, so susceptible, and soe 
mpatient of injury, as that any unusual pressure upon it, or any consider. 
able obstruction of its course, is followed by paralysis or death. Now 
the spine was not only to furnish the main trunk for the passage of the 
medullary substance from the brain, but to give out, in the course of 
its progress, small pipes therefrom, which being afterward indefinitely 
subdivided, might, under the name of nerves, distribute this exquisite _ 
supply to every part of the body. ‘The same spine was also to serve, 
another use not less wanted than the preceding, viz. to afford a fulcrum, 


~ . 


320 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, [PART 


stay, or basis, (or, more properly speaking, a series of these,) for the 
insertion of the muscles which are spread over the trunn of the body ; 
in which trunk there are not, as in the limbs, cylindrical bones, to which 
they can be fastened: and, likewise, which is a similar use, to furnish 
a support for the ends of the ribs to rest upon. 

'« Bespeak of a workman a piece of mechanism which shall comy rise 
all these purposes, and let him set about to contrive it; let him try his 
skill upon it; let him feel the difficulty of accomplishing the task, before 
he be told how the same thing is effected in the animal frame. Nothing 
will enable him to judge so well of the wisdom which has been em- 
ployed; nothing will dispose him to think of it so truly. First, for the 
firmness, yet flexibility of the spine, it is composed of a great number 
of bones ‘in the human subject of twenty-four) joimed to one another, 
and compacted together by broad bases. The breadth of the bases 
upon which the parts severally rest, and the closeness of the junction, 
give to the chain its firmness and stability; the number of parts, and 
consequent frequency of joints, its flexibility. Which fléxibility, we may 
also observe, varies in different parts of the chain; is least in the back, 
where strength more than flexure is wanted; greater in the loins, whieh 
it was necessary should be more supple than the back ; and the greatest 
of all in the neck, for the free motion of the head. Then, secondly, in 
order to afford a passage for the descent ot the medullary substance, 
each of these bones is bored through in the middle in such a manner, as 
that, when put together, the hole in one bone falls into a line, and cor- 
responds with the holes in the two bones contiguous to it. By which 
means, the perforated pieces, when joined, form an entire, close, unin- 
terrupted channel ; at least, while the spine 18 upright and at rest. But, 
as a settled posture is inconsistent with its use, a great difficulty still 
remained, which was to prevent the vertebrae shifting upon one another, 
so as to break the line of the canal as often as the body moves or 
twists; or the joints gaping externally, whenever the body is bent for- 
ward, and the spine thereupon made to take the form of a bow. These 
dangers, which are mechanical, are mechanically provided against. 
The vertebrae, by means of their processes and: projections, and of the 
articulations which some of these form with one another at their ex- 
tremities, are so locked in, and confined as to maintain in what are 
called the bodies, or broad surfaces of the bones, the relative position 
nearly unaltered ; and to throw the change and the pressure produced 
by flexion, almost entirely upon the intervening cartilages, the springi- 
“ness and yielding nature of whose substance admits of all the motion 
which is necessary to be performed upon them, without any chasm being 
produced by a separation of the parts. I say of all the motion which 
is necessary ; for although we bend our backs to every degree almost 
of inclination, the motion of each vertebra is very small; such is the 


SEUOND.} THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 32} 


advantage which we receive from the chain being composed of so many 
links, the spine of so many bones. Had it consisted of three or four 
bones only, in bending the body the spinal marrow must have: been 
bruised at every angle. The reader need not be told that these inter 
vening cartilages are gristles; and he may see them in perfection in a 
loin of veal. Their form also favours the same intention. They are 
thicker before than behind; so that, when we stoop forward, the com- 
pressible substance of the cartilage, yielding in its thicker and anterior 
part to the force which squeezes it, brings the surfaces of the adjoining 
vertebrae nearer to the being parallel with one another than they were 
before, instead of increasing the inclination of their planes, which must 
have occasioned a fissure, or opening between them. Thirdly, for the 
medullary canal giving out in its course, and in a convenient order, a 
supply of nerves to different parts of the body, notches are made in the 
upper and lower edge of every vertebra; two on each edge; equidis- 
tant on each side from the middle line of the back. When the vertebre 
are put together, these notches, exactly fitting, form small holes, through 
which the nerves, at each articulation, issue out in pairs, in order to send 
their branches to every part of the body, and with an equal bounty to 
both sides of the body. The fourth purpose assigned to the same in- 
strument, is the insertion of the bases of the muscles, and the support 
of the ends of the ribs; and for this fourth purpose, especially the 
former part of it, a figure, specifically suited to the design, and unneces- 
sary for the other purposes, is given to the constituent bones. While they 
are plain, and round, and smooth, toward the front, where any roughness 
or projection might. have wounded the adjacent viscera, they run out, 
behind, and on each side, into long processes, to which processes the 
muscles necessary to the motions of the trunk are fixed ; and fixed with 
such art, that while the vertebrae supply a basis for the muscles, the 
muscles help to keep these bones in their position, or by their tendons to 
tie them together. 

“That most important, however, and general property, viz. the 
strength of the compages, and the security against luxation, was to be 
still more specially consulted; for where so many joints were con- 
cerned, and where, in every one, derangement would have been fatal, it 
became a subject of studious precaution. For this purpose, the vertebre 
are articulated, that is, the movable joints between them are formed by 
mears of those projections of their substance, which we have mentioned 
under the name of processes ; and these so lock in with, and overwrap one 
another, as to secure the body of the vertebra, not only from accidentally — 
slipping, but even from being pushed out of its place by any violence 
short of that which would break the bone.” 

Instances of design and wonderful contrivance are as numerous as 


there are organized bodies in nature, and as there are relations between 
Von. I. AM 


y dla THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. ' [PARI 


bodies which are nct organized. The subject is, therefore, inexhaustible 
The cases stated are sufficient for the illustration of this species of ar- 
gument for the existence of an intelligent First Cause. Many others 
are given with great force and interest in the Natural Theology of Paley, 
from which the above quotations have been made ; but his chapter on 
the Personality of the Deity contains applications of the argument frum 
design, too important to be overlooked. ‘The same course of reasoning 
may be traced in many other writers, but by none has it been expressed 
with so much clearness and felicity. 

‘«‘ Contrivance, if established, appears to me to prove every thing 
which we wish to prove. Among other things it proves the personality 
of the Deity, as distinguished from what is sometimes called nature, 
sometimes called a principle ; which terms, in the mouths of those who 
use them philosophically, seem to be intended, to admit and to express 
an efficacy, but to exclude and to deny a personal agent. Now that 
which can contrive, which can design, must be a,person. ‘These ca- 
pacities constitute personality, for they imply consciousness and thought. 
They require that which can perceive an end or purpose; as well as 
the power of providing means, and of directing them to their end. 
They require a centre in which perceptions unite, and from which 
volitions flow; which is mind. ‘The acts of a mind prove the existence 
of a mind; and in whatever a mind resides, is a person. 

«Of this we are certain, that, whatever the Deity be, neither the 
universe, nor any part of it which we see, can be he. ‘The universe 
itself is merely a collective name: its parts are all which are real, or 
which are things. Now inert matter is out of the question; and or- 
ganized substances include marks of contrivance. But whatever includes 
marks of contrivance, whatever, in its constitution, testifies design, neces- 
sarily carries us to something beyond itself, to some other being, to a 
designer prior to, and out of itself. No animal, for instance, can have 
contrived iis own limbs and senses; can have been the author to itself 
of the design with which they were constructed. That supposition 
involves all the absurdity of self creation, i. e. of acting without existing. 
Nothing can be God which is ordered by a wisdom and a will which 
itself is void of; which is indebted for any of its properties to contriy- 
ance ab extra. ‘The not having that in his nature which requires the 
sertion of another prior being, (which property is sometimes called 
self sufhciency, and sometimes self comprehension,) appertains to the 
Deity, as his essential distinction, and removes his nature from that of 
all things which we see. Which consideration contains the answer to 
a question that has sometimes been asked, namely, Why, since some- 
thing or other must have existed from eternity, may not the present 
universe be that something? ‘The contrivance perceived in it, proves: 
that to be impossible. Nothing contrived can, in a strict and proper 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 323 


sense, be eternal. forasmuch as the contriver must have existed before 
the contrivance. 

“« We have already noticed, and we must here notice again, the mis- 
application of the term ‘law,’ and the mistake concerning the idea which 
that term expresses in physics, whenever such idea is made to take the 
place of power, and still more of an intelligent power, aud, as such, to 
oe assigned for the cause of any thing, or of any property of any thing 
that exists. ‘This is what we are secretly apt to do when we speak of 
organized bodies (plants, for instance, or animals) owing their produc- 
tion, their form, their growth, their qualities, their beauty, their use, to 
any law, or laws of nature ; and when we are contented to sit down with 
that answer to our inquiries concerning them. I say once more, that it 
is a perversion of language to assign any law, as the efficient operative 
cause of any thing. A law presupposes an agent, for it is only the ° 
mode according to which an agent proceeds; it implies a power, for it 
is the order according to which that power acts. Without this agent, 
without this power, which are both distinct from itself, the ‘law’ does 
nothing ; is nothing. : , 

“ What has been said concerning ‘law,’ holds true of mechanism. 
Mechanism is not itself power. Mechanism without power can do 
nothing. Let a watch be contrived and constructed ever so ingeniously ; 
be its parts ever so many, ever so complicated, ever so finely wrought, 
or artificially put together, it cannot go without a weight or spring, .i. e. 
without a force independent of, and ulterior to its mechanism. The 
spring, acting at the centre, will produce different motions and different 
results, according to the variety of the intermediate mechanism. One 
and the self-same spring, acting in one and the same manner, viz. by 
simply expanding itself, may be the cause of a hundred different, and 
all useful movements, if a hundred different and well-devised sets of 
wheels be placed between it and the final effect, e. g. may point out the 
hour of the day, the day of the month, the age of the moon, the position 
of the planets, the cycle of the years, and many other serviceable 
notices; and these movements may fulfil their purposes with more or 
less perfection, according as the mechanism is better or worse con- 
trived, or better or worse executed, or im a better or worse state of 
repair; but in all cases, it is necessary that the spring act at the centre. 
‘The course of our reasoning upon such a subject would be this. By 
inspecting the watch, even when standing still, we get a proof of con- 
trivance, and of a contriving mind having been employed about it. In 
the form and obvious relation of its parts, we see enough to convince us 
of this. If we pull the works in pieces, for the purpose of a closer 
examination, we are still more fully convinced. But when we see 
the watch going, we see proof of another point, viz. that there is a 
power somewhere. and somehow or other applied to it; a pewer in 


324 | . THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


actiou; that there is more in the subject than the mere wheels of the 
machine ; that there is a secret spring, or a gravitating plummet; im 2 
word, that there is force and energy, as well as mechanism. 

«“ So, then, the watch in motion establishes to the observer twc cun 
clusicns : one, that thought, contrivance, and design have been employed 
in the forming, proportioning, and arranging of its parts; and that who 
ever or wherever he be, or were, such a contriver there is, or wes: the 
other, that force or power, distinct from mechanism, is, at this present 
time, acting upon it. If I saw a hand mill even at rest, I should see 
contrivance ; but if I saw it grinding, I should be assured that a hand 
was at the windlass, though in another room. _ It is the same in nature. 
In the works of nature we trace mechanism ; and this alone proves con- 
trivance ; but living, active, moving, productive nature, proves also the 
exertion of a power at the centre ; for wherever the power resides, may 
be denominated the centre. . 

“The intervention and disposition of what are called ‘ second causes’ 
fall under the same observation. This disposition is or is not mechanism, 
according as we can or cannot trace it by our senses, and means of 
examination. That ts all the difference there is; and it is a difference 
which respects our faculties, not the things themselves. Now where the 
order of second causes is mechanical, what is here said of mechanism 
strictly applies to it. But it would be always mechanism (natural chemistry, 
for instance, would be mechanism) if our senses were acute enough 
to descry it. Neither mechanism, therefore, in the works of nature, nor 
the intervention of what are called second causes, (for I think that they 
are the same thing,) excuses the necessity of an agent distinct from beth. 

“Tf, in tracing these causes, it be said, that we find certain general] 
properties of matter, which have nothing in them that bespeaks intelli- 
gence, I answer that, still, the managing of these properties, the pointing 
and directing them to the uses which we see made of them, demands 
intelligence in the highest degree. For example, suppose animal secre- 
tions to be elective attractions, and that such and such attractions uni- 
versally belong to such and such substances; in all which there is no 
intellect concerned ; still the choice and collocation of these substances, 
the fixing upon right substances, and disposing them in night places, must 
be an act of mtelligence. What mischief would follow, were there a 
single transposition of the secretory organs; a single mistake in arrang- 
ing the glands which compose them! 

«There may be many second causes, and many courses of second 
causes, one behind another, between what we abserve of nature and the 
Deity , but there must be intelligence somewhere ; there must be more 
in nature than what we see; and among the things unseen, there must 
be an intelligent, designing author. ‘The philosopher beholds with as- 
tonishment the production of things around him. © Unconscious particles 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 325 


ef matter take their stations, and severally range themselves in an order, 
So as to become collectively plants or animals, i. e. organized, bodies, 
with parts bearing strict and evident relation to one another, and to the 
utility of the whole: and it should seem that these particles could not 
move in any other way than as they do; for they testify not the smallest 
sign of choice, or liberty, or discretion. There may be particular intelli. 
gent beings guiding these motions in each case; or they may be the 
reslt of trains of mechanical dispositions, fixed beforehand by an intelli- 
gent appointment, and kept in action by a power at the centre. But in 
either case there must be intelligence.” 

The above arguments, as they irresistibly confirm the Scripture doc 
trine of the existence of an intelligent First Cause, expose the extreme 
folly and absurdity of Atheism. ‘The first of the leading theories which 
it has ascumed, is the eternity of matter. When this means the eternity 
vf the world in its present form and constitution, it is contradicted by 
the changes which are actually ‘and every moment taking place in it ; 
and, as above argued, by the contrivance which it every where presents, 
and which, it has been proved, necessarily supposes that designing intelli. 
gence we call God. When it means the eternity of unorganized matter 
only, the subject which has received those various forms, and orderly 
arrangements, which imply contrivance and final causes, it leaves un- 
touched the question of an intelligent cause, the author of the forms with 
which it has been impressed. A creative cause may, and must, never 
theless exist ; and this was the opinion of many of the ancient Theistica: 
philosophers, who ascribed eternity both to God and to matter ; and con- 
sidered creation, not as the bringing of something out of nothing, but as 
the framing of what actually existed without order and without end. 
But though this tenet was held, in conjunction with a belief in the Deity, 
by many who had not the light of the Scripture revelation ; yet its manifest 
tendency is to Atheism, because it supposes the impossibility of creation 
in the absolute sense; and thus produces limited notions of God, from 
which the transition to an entire denial of him is an easy step. In 
modern times, therefore, the opinion of the eternity of matter has been 
held by few but absolute Atheists. 

What seems to have led to the notion of a pre-existent and eternal 
matter out of which the world was formed, was the supposed impossibility 
of a creation from nothing, according to the maxim, “ex nzhilo nihil fit.” 
The philosophy was however bad, because as no contradiction was im- 
plied in thus ascribing to God the power to create out of nothing ; it was 
a matter of choice, whether to allow what was merely not compre- 
hensible by man, or to put limitations without reason to the power of 
God. Thus Cudworth :— 

« Because it is undeniably certain, concerning ourselves, and all im: 
perfect beings, that none of these can create any new substance, men are . 


326 THEOLOGICAI INSTITUTES, iPAKS 


apt to measure ull things by their own scantling, and to suppose it unt- 
versally impossible for any power whatever thus to create, But since 
it is certain, that imperfect beings can themselves produce some things 
out of nothing pre-existing, as new cogitations, new local motion, and new 
modifications of things corporeal, it is surely reasonable to think that an 
absolutely perfect being can do something more, 2. e. create new substances, 
or give them their whole being. And it may well be thought as casy 
for God or an omnipotent Being to make a whole world, matter and all, 
é& sx ovrwv, as it is for us to create a thought or to move a finger, or for 
the sun to send out rays, or a candle light, or lastly, for an opaque body 
to produce an image of itself in a glass or water, or to project a shadow: 
all these imperfect things being but the energies, rays, images, or sha- 
dows of the Deity. For a substance to be made out of nothing by God, or 
a Being infinitely perfect, is not for it to be made out of nothing in the 
impossible sense, because it comes from him who is all. Nor can it be 
said to be impossible for any thing whatever to be made by that which 
hath not only infinitely greater perfection, but also infinite active power 
It is indeed true, that infinite power itself cannot do things in their owr 
nature impossible; and, therefore, those who deny creation ought tc 
prove that it is absolutely impossible for a substance, though not for ar 
accident or modification, to be brought from non-existence into being 
But nothing is in itself impossible, which does not imply a contradiction : 
and though it be a contradiction for a thing to be and not to be at the 
same time, there is surely no contradiction in conceiving an imperfect 
being, which before was not, afterward to be.” 

It is not necessary to refer to the usual metaphysical arguments to 
show the non-eternity of matter, by proving that its existence must be 
necessary if it be eternal; and, if necessary, that it must be infinite, &c. 
They are not of much value. Every man bears in himself the proof 
of a creation out of nothing, so that the objection from the impossibility 
of the thing is at once removed. 

“That sensation, intelligence, consciousness, and volition, are not the 
result of any modifications of figure and motion, is a truth as evident as 
that consciousness is not swift, nor volition square. If then these he 
the powers or properties of a being distinct from matter, which we think 
ecpable of the completest proof, every man who does not believe that 
|:s mind has existed and been conscious from eternity, must be convinced 
tliat the power of creation has been exerted on himself. If it be denied 
that there is any immaterial substance in man, still it must be confessed 
that, as matter is not essentially conscious, and cannot be made so by 
any particular organization, there is some real thing or entity call it what 
you please, which has either existed and been conscious from eternity, or 
been in time brought from non-entity into existence by an exertion of 
infinite power.” 


SBECOND.! THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 327 


The former no sober person will contend for, and the lattur therefore 
must be admitted. 

On these grounds the absurdity of Atheism is manifest. If it attributes 
the various arrangements of material things to chance, that is, to nothing, 
it rests in design without a designer ; in effects without a cause. It it 
allow an intelligent cause operating to produce these effects, but,denies 
him to be almighty, by ascribing eternity to matter, and placing its crea- 
tion beyond his power, it acknowledges with us indeed a God ; but makes 
him an imperfect being, limited in his power ; and it chooses to acknow- 
ledge this limited and imperfect being not only withovt reason, for we 
have just seen that creation out of nothing implies no contradiction, but 
even against reason, for the acknowledgment of a creation out of nothing 
must be forced from him by his own experience, unless he will contend 
that that conscious being himself may have existed from eternity without 
being conscious of existence, except for the space of a few past years. 

On some modern schemes of Atheism, Paley justly remarks :— 

“much doubt, whether the new schemes have advanced any thing 
upon the old, or done more than changed the terms of the nomenclature. 
For instance, I could never see the difference between the antiquated 
system of atoms and Buffon’s organic molecules. This philosopher, 
having made a planet by knocking off from the sun a piece of melted 
glass, in consequence of thé stroke of a comet; and having set it in 
motion by the same stroke, both round its own axis and the sun, finds 
his next difficuity to be, how to bring plants and animals upon it. In 
order to solve this difficulty, we are to suppose the universe replenished 
with particles endowed with life, but without organization or senses of 
their own; and endowed also with a tendency to marshal themselves 
into. organized forms. ‘The concourse of these particles, by virtue of 
this tendency, but without intelligence, will, or direction, (for I do not 
find that any of these qualities are ascribed to them,) has produced the 
living forms which we now see. 

“ Very few of the conjectures, which philosophers hazard upon these 
subjects, have more of pretension in them, than the challenging you to 
show the direct impossibility of the hypothesis. In the present example 
there seemed to be a positive objection to the whole scheme upon the 
very face of it; which was that, if the case were as here represented, 
new combinations ought to be perpetually taking place ; new plants and 
animals, or organized bodies which were neither, ought to be starting 
up before our eyes every day. For this, however, our philosopher has 
an answer. While so many forms of plants and animals are already in 
existence, and consequently, so many ‘internal moulds,’ as he calls 
them, are prepared and at hand, the organic particles run into these 
moulds, and are employed in supplying an accession of substance - 
.o them, as well for their growth, as for their propagation ,—by 


328 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


which means things keep their ancient course. But, says the same 
philosopher, should any general loss*or destruction of the present 
constitution of organized bodies take place, the particles for want 
of ‘inoulds’ into which they might enter, would run into different com- 
binations, and replenish the waste with new species of organized 
substances. 

“Is there any history to countenance this notion? 1s it known, that 
any destruction has been so repaired? Any desert thus re-peopled ? 

“ But, these wonder-working instruments, these ‘internal moulds,’ 
what are they after all? What, when examined, but a name without 
signification? unintelligible, if not self contradictory; at the best dif- 
fering in nothing from the ‘essential forms’ of the Greek philosophy ? 
One short sentence of Buffon’s works exhibits his scheme as follows :— 
‘When this nutritious and prolific matter, which is diffused throughout 
all nature, passes through the internal mould of an animal or vegetable, and 
finds a proper matrix or receptacle, it gives rise to an animal or vegetable 
of the same species.’ Does any reader annex a meaning to the expres- 
sion ‘internal mould,’ in this sentence? Ought it then to be said, that 
though we have little notion of an internal mould, we have not much 
more of a designing mind? ‘The very contrary of this assertion is the 
truth. When we speak of an artificer or an architect, we talk of 
what is comprehensible to our understanding, and familiar to our expe- 
rience. We use no other terms, than what refer us for their meaning 
to our consciousness and observation; what express the constant 
objects of both; whereas names like that we have mentioned, refer us 
to nothing ; excite no idea; convey a sound to the ear, but I think do 
no more. 

« Another system, which has lately been brought forward, and with 
much ingenuity, is that of appetencies. ‘The principle, and the short 
account of the theory, is this: pieces of soft, ductile matter, being 
endued with propensities or appetencies for particular actions, would, by 
continual endeavours, carried on through a long series of generations, 
work themselves gradually into suitable forms ; and at length acquire, 
though perhaps by obscure and almost imperceptible improvements, an 
organization fitted to the action which their respective propensities led 
them to exert. A piece of animated matter for example, that was 
endued with a propensity to fly, though ever so shapeless, though no 
other we will suppose than a round ball, to begin with, would, in a 
course of ages, if not in a million of years, perhaps in a hundred mil- 
lion of years, (for our theorists, having eternity to dispose of, are never 
sparing in time,) acquire wings. The same tendency to locomotion in 
an aquatic animal, or rather in an animated Jump which might happen te 
be surrounded by water, would end in the production of fins: in a living 
substance, confined to the solid earth, would put out legs and feet; or € 


6ECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. | 329 


it took a different turn, would break the body into ringlets, and conclude 
by crawling upon the ground. 

“The scheme under consideration is open to the same objection with 
other conjectures of a similar tendency, viz. a total defect of evidence. 
No changes, like those which the theory requires, have ever been observed. 
All the changes in Ovid’s Metamorphoses might have been effected by 
these appetencies, if the theory were true: yet not an example, nor the 
pretence of an example, is offered of a single change being known to 
have taken place. 

“The solution, when applied to the works of nature generally, is 
contradicted by many of the phenomena, and totally inadequate to 
others. The ligaments or strictures, by which the tendons are tied 
down at the angles of the joints, could by no possibility be formed by 
the motion or exercise of the tendons themselves; by any appetency 
exciting these parts mto action: or by any tendency arising therefrom. 
The tendency is all the other way; the conatus in constant opposition 
to them. Length of time does not help the case at all, but.the reverse. 
The valves also in the blood vessels could never be formed in the man- 
ner which our theorist proposes. The blood, in its right and natural 
course, has no tendency to form them. When obstructed or refluent, it 
has the contrary. ‘These parts could not grow out of their use, though 
they had eternity to grow in. 

«“'The senses of animals appear to me altogether incapable of receiv. 
ing the explanation of their origin which this theory affords. Including 
under the word ‘sense’ the organ and the perception, we have no 
account of either. How will our philosopher get at vis7on, or make an 
eye? How should the blind animal affect sight, of which blind ani. 
mals, we know, have neither conception nor desire? Affecting it, by 
what operation of its will, by what endeavour to see, could it so deter- 
mine the fluids of its body, as to inchoate the formation of an eye? Or 


suppose the eye formed, would the perception follow? The same of © 


the other senses. And this objection holds its force, ascribe what you 
will to the hand of time, to the power of habit, to changes too slow to 
be observed by man, or brought within any comparison which he is 
able to make of past things with the present: concede what you please 
to these arbitrary and unattested suppositions, how will they help you? 
Here is no inception. No laws, no course, no powers of nature which 
prevail at present, nor any analogous to these, could give commence- 
ment to a new sense. And it is in vain to inquire, how that might pro- 
ceed which could never begin. 

“In the last place: what do these appetencies mean when applied 
to plants? Iam not able to give a signification to the term, which 
can be transferred from animals to plants; or which is common ta 
both. Yet ano less successful organization is found in plants, than 


‘ 


330 THEOLUGICAL INSTITUTES, [PART 


what obtains in animals. A solution is wanted for one as well as the 
other. ; 

+ Upon the whole; after all the schemes and struggles of a reluctant 
philosophy, the necessary resort is a Deity. The marks of design are 
too strong to be got over. Design must have had a designer. That 
designer must have been a person. ‘That person is Gop.” 

Well has it been said, that Atheism is, in all its theories, a credulity 
of the grossest kind, equally degrading to the understanding and to the 
heart: for what reiecting and honest mind can for a moment put these 
theories into competition with that revealed in the Scriptures, at once 
so sublime and so convincing; and which instead of shunning, like 
those just mentioned, an appeal to facts, bids us look to the heavens and 
to the earth; assemble the aggregate of beings, great and small; and 
examine their structure, and mark their relations, in proof that there 
must exist an all-wise and an almighty Creator ? 

Such is the evidence which the doctrine of a Deity receives from 
experience, observation, and rational induction, @ posteriert. The argu- 
ment thus stated, has an overwhelming force, and certainly needs no 
other, though attempts have been made to obtain proof @ priori, and 
thus to meet and rout the forces of the enemy in both directions. No 
instance is however I believe on record of an Atheistic conversion hay- 
ing been produced by this process, and it may be ranked among the 
over zealous attempts of the advocates of truth. It is well intentioned, 
but unsatisfactory, and so far as on the one hand it has led to a neglect 
of the more convincing, and powerful course of argument drawn from 
“the things which do appear ;” and on the other, has encouraged a 
dependence upon a mode of investigation, to which the human mind is 
inadequate, which in many instances is an utter mental delusion, and 
which scarcely two minds will conduct in the same manner; it has 
probably been mischievous in its effects by inducing a skepticism not 
‘ arising out of the nature of the case, but from the imperfect and unsa- 
tisfactory investigations of the human understanding, pushed beyond the 
limit of its powers. In most instances it is a sword which cuts two 
ways; and the mere imaginary assumptions of those who think they 
have found out a new way to demonstrate truth, have in many instances 
either done disservice to it by absurdity, or yielded principles which unbe.- 
lievers have connected with the most injurious conclusions. We need only 
instance the doctrine of the necessary existence of the Deity, when rea- 
soned @ priori. Some acute infidels have thanked those for the discovery 
who intended nothing so little as to encourage error; and have argued 
from that notion, that the Supreme Being cannot be a free agent, and 
have thus set the first principles of religion at variance with the Scrip. 
tures. The fact seems to be, that though, when once the existence of 
a first and intelligent cause is established, some of his attributes are 


SECOND. ] _ THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 331 


capable of proof @ priori, (how much that proof is worth is another 
question,) yet that his exzstence itself admits of no such demonstration, 
and that in the nature of the thing it 1s impossible. 

The reason of this is drawn from the very nature of an argument 
«@ priort. It is an argument from an antecedent to a consequent, from 
cause to effect. If therefore there be any thing existing in nature, or 
could have been, from which the being and attributes of God might have 
been derived, or any thing which can be justly considered as prior in 
orde of nature or conception to the first cause of all things; then may 
the argument from such prior thing or principle be good and valid.— 
But if there is in reality nothing prior to the being of God, considered 
as the first cause and causality, nothing in nature, nothing in reason, 
then the attempt is fruitless to argue from it; and we improperly pre- 
tend to search into the grounds or reasons of the first cause, of whom 
antecedently we neither do nor can know any thing. 

As the force of the argument @ priori has however been much 
debated, it may not be useless to enter somewhat more fully into the 
subject. 

One of the earliest and ablest advocates of this mode of demonstrat- 
ing the existence of God, was Dr. Samuel Clarke. He however first 
proceeds a posteriori to prove, from the actual existence of dependent 
beings, the existence from eternity of “‘ one unchangeable and independ- 
ent Being ;” and thus makes himself debtor to this obvious and plain 
demonstration before he can prove that this Being is, in his sense, 
necessarily existent. Necessity of existence is therefore tacitly acknow- 
ledged, not to be a tangible idea in the first instance ; and the weight 
of the proof is tacitly confessed to rest upon the argument from effect to 
cause, which if admitted needs no assistance from a more abstract 
course of arguing. For if the first argument be allowed, every thing 
else follows; and it must be allowed, before the higher ground of 
demonstration can be taken. We have seen the guarded manner in 
which Howe, in the quotation before given, has stated the notion of the 
necessary existence of the Divine Being. Dr. S. Clarke and his fol- 
lowers have refined upon this, and given a view of the subject which is 
liable to the strongest objections. His words are, “To be self existent 
is to exist by an absolute necessity, originally in the nature of the thing 
itself ;”? and “this necessity must not be barely consequent upon our 
supposition of the existence of such a being, for then it would not be a 
ne«essity absolutely such in itself, nor be the ground or foundation of the 
existence of any thing, being on the contrary only a consequent of it ; 
but it must antecedently force itself upon us whether we will or not; 
even when we are endeavouring to suppose that no such being exists.” 
(Demonstration 1.) : 

One of the reasons given for this opinion is, “ there must be in nature 


332 THEOLOGIVAL INSTITUTES. . |PART 


a permanent ground or reason for the existence of the first cause, other- 
wise its being would be owing to mere chance.” But to this it has been 
well replied, “« Why must we say that God has his existence from, or 
that he does exist for some prior cause or reason? Why may we not 
say that God exists as the first cause of all things, and thereupon sur- 
cease from all farther inquiries? God himself said ‘I am,’ and he had 
done. But the argument, if it did prove any thing, would prove toc 
much. ‘To evince which, let the same way of reasoning be applied te 
what you call the ground or the reason of the existence of the first 
cause, and then with very little variation, I retort upon you in your own 
words. If this ground or reason be itself any thing, or any property 
of any thing, of what nature, kind or degree suever, there must accord- 
ing to your way of reasoning, be in nature a ground or reason of the 
existence of such your antecedent necessity, ‘a reason why it is, rather 
than why it is not, otherwise its existence will be owing to, or dependent 
on, mere chance.’ You observe elsewhere that ‘nothing can be more 
absurd than to suppose that any thing, or any circumstance of any thing, 
is, and yet that there is absolutely no reason why it is, rather than why 
it is not.’ This consideration you allege as a vindication of your assign- 
ing a reason, @ priori, for the existence of the first cause. If therefore 
your supposed reason, ground, or necessity, be ‘any thing or any sup- 
posable circumstance of any thing,’ as surely it must be, if not mere 
nothing, then by the same rule, such ‘ ground,’ ‘ necessity,’ &c, must have 
a reason, @ priort, why it is, rather than why it ts not, and after that 
another, and then a third, and so on in infinitum. And thus in your 
way we may be always seeking a first cause, and never be able to find 
one, whereon to fix ourselves, or check our restless and unprofitable in- 
quiries. While indeed we consider only inferior existencies and second 
causes, there will always be room left for inquiring why such things are, 
and how such things came to be as they are; because this is only 
seeking and investigating the initial, the efficient, or the final cause of 
their existence. But when we are advanced beyond all causes proca- 
tarctical and final, it remains only to say, that such is our first cause and 
causality, that we know it exists, and without prior cause ; and with this 
you yourself will be obliged to fall in, the first step you farther take ; 
for :f we ask yo. of the antecedent necessity, whence it is, and what 
prior ground there was for it, you must yourself be content to say— 32 
it is, you know not why, you know not how.” (Gretton’s Review of the 
Argument «i priori.) 

‘The necessary existence of the first cause, considered as a logical 
necessity, may be made out without difficulty, and 1s indeed demonstrated 
‘n the arguments given above ; but the natural necessi‘y of his existence 
is a subject too subtle for human grasp, and, from its obscurity, is cal. 
culated to mislead. Every thing important in the idea, so far as it is 


SECOND.] TILEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 333 


unexceptionable, is well and safely expressed by Baxfer. “That which 
sould be eternaily without a cause, and itself cause all things, is seif 
sufficient and independent.” (Reasons of the Christian Religion.) This 
seems the only true notion of necessary existence, and care should be 
taken to use the term in a definite and comprehensible sense. ‘The 
word necessity when applied to existence may be taken in two accepta. 
lions, either as it arises from the relation which the existence of that of 
which it is affirmed has to the existence of other things, or from the re- 
lation which the actual existence of that thing has to the manner of its 
own existence. In the former sense, it denotes that the supposition of 
the non-existence of that of which the necessity is affirmed, implies the 
non-existence of things we know to exist. Thus some independent 
being does necessarily exist; because to suppose no independent being, 
implies that there are no dependent beings, the contrary of which we 
know to he true.: In the second sense, necessity means that the being 
of which it is affirmed exists after such a manner as that it never could 
in time past have been non-existent, or can in future time cease to be. 
Thus every independent being, as it exists without a cause, is neces- 
sarily existing, because existence is essential to such a being; so that 
it never could begin to exist, and never can cease to be: for to suppose 
a being to begin to exist, or to lose its existence, is to suppose a change 
from non-entity to entity, or vice versd ; and to suppose such a change 
is to suppose a cause upon which that being depends. Every being 
therefore which is independent, that is, which had no cause of its exist- 
ence, must exist necessarily, and cannot possibly have begun to exist in 
time past, or cease to be in time future. 

Still farther on Dr. S. Clarke’s view of the necessary existence of the: 
Supreme Being, it has been observed, 

“ But what is this necessity which proves so much? It is the ground 
of existence (he says) of that which exists of itself; and if so, it must, 
in the order of nature, and in our conceptions, be antecedent to that 
being of whose existence it is the ground. Concerning such a principle, 
there are but three suppositions which can possibly be made ; and all 
of them may he shown to be absurd and contradictory. We may sup 
pose either the substance itself, some property of that substance, or 
something extrinsic to both, to be this antecedent ground of existence 
ptior in the order of nature to the first cause. 

‘ One would think, from the turn of the argument which here repre- 
sents this antecedent necessity as efficient and causal, that it were 
cunsidered as something extrinsic to the first cause. Indeed, if the 
words have any meaning in them at all, or any force of argument, they 
must be so understood, just as we understand them of any external 
cause producing its effect. But as an extrinsic principle is absurd in 
itself, and is beside rejected by Dr. S. Clarke, who says expressly, that 


334 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


of the thing which derives not its being from any other thing, this ne- 
cessity or ground of existence must be in the thing itself,’ we need not 
say a. word more of the last of these suppositions. 

‘«‘ Let us then consider the first; let us take the substance itself, and 
try whether it can be conceived as prior or antecedent to itself in our 
conceptions or in the order of nature. Surely we need not observe that 
nothing can be more absurd or contradictory than such a supposition. 
Dr. S. Clarke himself repeatedly affirms, and it would be strange indeed 
if he did not affirm, that no being, no thing whatever, can be conceived 
as in any respect prior to the first cause. 

“The only remaining supposition :s, that some attribute or property 
of the self-existent being may be conceived as in the order of nature 
antecedent to that being. But this, if possible, is more absurd than 
either of the two preceding suppositions. “ An attribute is attributed to 
its subject as its ground or support, and not the subject to its attribute. 
A property, in the very notion of it, is proper to the substance to which 
it belongs, and subsequent to it both in our conceptions and in the order 
of nature. An antecedent attribute, or antecedent property, is a sole- 
cism as great, and a contradiction as flat, as an antecedent subsequent 
or a subsequent antecedent, understood in the same sense and in the 
same syllogism. Every property or attribute, as such, presupposes its 
subject ; and cannot otherwise be understood. This is a truth so ob- 
vious and so forcible, that it sometimes extorts the assent even of those 
who upon other occasions labour to obscure it. It is confessed by Dr. 
S. Clarke, that ‘the scholastic way of proving the existence of the self. 
existent being from the absolute perfection of his nature, is u¢répov 
wporépove or all or any perfections (says he) presuppose existence ; 
which is a petitio principw.’ If therefore properties, modes, or attri. 
butes in God, be considered as perfections, (and it is impossible to con- 
sider them as any thing else,) then, by this confession of the great 
Author himself, they must all or any of them presuppose existence. It 
is indeed immediately added in the same place, ‘that bare necessity of 
existence does not presuppose, but infer existence ;’ which is true only 
if such necessity be supposed to be a principle extrinsic, the absurdity 
of which has been already shown, and is indeed universally confessed. 
If it be a mode or property, it must presuppose the existence of its sub. 
ject, as certainly and as evidently as it is a mode ora property. It 
might perhaps a posteriori infer the existence of its subject, as effects 
may infer a cause ; but that it should infer in the other way @ priori 1s 
altogether as impossible as that a triangle should be a square, or a g! >be 
a parallelogram.” (Law’s Inquiry.) 

The true idea of the necessary existence of God is, that he thus exists 
because it is his nature, as an independent and uncaused being, to be, 
his being is necessary hecause it is underived, not underived because it 


RY COND. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 45 


is necessary. ‘The first is the sober sense of the word among our old 
divines ; the latter is a theory of modern date, and leads to no practical 
result whatever, except to entangle the mind in difficulty, and to give a 
colour to some very injurious errors. 

Equally unsatisfactory, and therefore quite as little calculated to 
Serve the cause of truth, is the argument from space ; which is repre- 
sented by Newton, Clarke, and others, as an infinite mode of ar infinie 
subsiance, and that substance God, so that from the existence of space 
itself may be argued the existence of one supreme and infinite Being. 
Berkeley, Law, and others, have however shown the fallacy of consi- 
dering space either as a substance, or a mode, and have brought these 
speculations under the dominion of common sense, and rescued them 
from metaphysical delusion. They have rightly observed, that space is 
a mere negation, and that to suppose it to have existence, because it has 
some properties, for instance, of penetrability, or the capacity of re- 
ceiving body, is the same thing as to affirm that darkness must be some. 
thing because it has the capacity of receiving light, and silence some- 
thing because it has the property of admitting sownd, and absence the 
property of being supplied by presence. ‘To reason in this manner is to 
assign absolute negations, and such as, in the same way, may be applied 
to nothing, and then call them positive properties, and so infer that the 
chimera, thus clothed with them, must needs be something. ‘The argu- 
ments in favour of the real existence of space as something positive, 
have failed in the hands of their first great authors, and the attempts 
since made to uphold them have added nothing but what is exceedingly 
futile, and indeed often obviously absurd. The whole of this contro 
versy has left us only to lament the waste of labour which has been 
employed in erecting around the impregnable ramparts of the great 
arguments on which the cause rests with so much safety, the useless 
incumbrances of mud and straw. 

The proof of the being of a God reposes wholly then upon arguments 
a posteriori, and it needs no other; though we shall see as we proceed 
that even these arguments, strong and irrefutable as they are when 
rightly applied, have been used to prove more as to some of the attri. 
butes of God, than can satisfactorily be drawn from them. Even with 
this safe and convincing process of reasoning at our command, we shall 
find, at every step of an inquiry into the Divine nature, our entire de. 
pendence upon Divine revelation, for our primary light. That must 
poth originate our investigations, and conduct them to a satisfactory 
result. 


336 _ THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


CHAPTER IL. 
Arrrpures of God: (5) Unity, Spiritualiry. 


Tue existence of a supreme Creator and First Cause of all things, 
himself uncaused, and independent, and therefore self existent, having 
beer. proved, the next question is, whether there exists more than one 
such Being, or, in other words, whether we are to ascribe to him an 
absolute unity or soleness. On this point the testimony of the Scriptures 
is express, and unequivocal. “The Lord our God is one Lord,” Deut. 
vi, 4. “The Lord he is God; there is NoNE ELSE beside him,” Deut. 
iv, 35. “Thou art God atonr,” Psalm Ixxxvi, 10. “ We know that 
an idol is nothing in the world, and there is none other God but onr.” 
Nor is this stated in Scripture, merely to exclude all other creators, 
governors, and deities, in connection with men, and the system of created 
things which we behold; but absolutely, so as to exclude the idea of the 
existence, any where, of more than one Divine nature. 

Of this unity, the proper Scripture notion may be thus expressed. 
Some things are one by virtue of composition, but God hath no parts, 
nor is compounded ; but is a pure simple Being. Some are one in 
kind, but admit many individuals of the same kind, as men, angels, and 
other creatures; but God is so one that there are no other gods, 
though there are other beings. Some things are so one, as that there 
exists no other of the same kind, as are one sun, one moon, one world. 
one heaven; yet there might have been more, if it had pleased Ged so 
to will it. But God is so one, that there is not, there cannot be, 
another Gop. He is one only, and takes up the Deity so fully, as 
to admit no fellow. (Lawson’s Theo- Politica.) 

The proof of this important doctrine from Scripture is short and 
simple. We have undoubted proofs of a revelation from the Maker and 
Governor of this present world. Granting him to be wise and good, 
“it is impossible that God should lie,” and his own testimony assigns to 
him an exclusive Deity. If we admit the authority of the Scriptures, 
we admit a Deity; if we admit one God, we exclude all others. The 
truth of Scripture, resting as we have seen on proofs which cannot be 
resisted without universal skepticism, and universal skepticism being 


(5) ‘They are called attributes, because God attributes them to and affirms 
them of himself. Properties, because we conceive them proper to God, and such 
as can be predicated only of him, so that by them we distinguish him from all 
other beings. Perfections, because they are the several representations of that 
one perfection which is himself. Names and Terms, because they express and 
signify something of his essence. Notions, because they are so many apprehen. 
sions of his being as we conceive of him in our minds.” (Lawson’s Theo. 
Politica.) 


&ECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 337 


proved to be impossible by the common conduct of even the most 
- skeptical men, the proof of the Divine unity rests precisely on the same 
basis, and is sustained by the same certain evidence. 

On this as on the former point however there is much ratzonal con- 
firmation, to which revelation has given us the key; though without 
that, and even in its strongest form, it may be concluded from the pre- 
valence of polytheism among the generality of nations, and of dualism 
among others, that the human mind would have had but too indistinct a 
view of this kind of evidence to rest in a conclusion su necessary to 
true religion and to settled rules of morals. 

To prove the unity of God several arguments @ priori have been 
made use of; to which mode of proof, provided the argument itself be 
logical, no objection lies. For though it appears absurd to attempt to 
prove @ prior the existence of a first cause, seeing that nothing can 
either in order of time or order of nature be prior to-him, or be con- 
ceived prior to him; yet the existence of an independent and self-exist- 
ent cause of all things being made known to us by revelation, and con- 
firmed by the phenomena of actual and dependent existence, a grounc 
is laid for considering, from this fact, which is antecedent in order of 
nature, though not in order of time, the consequent attributes with which 
such a Being must be invested. 

Among the arguments of this class to prove the Divine unity, the 
following are the principal :— 

Dr. 8. Clarke argues from his view of the necessary existence of the 
Divine Being :—“ Necessity,” he observes, “ absolute in itself, is simple 
and uniform, and universal, without any possible difference, difformity, 
or variety whatsoever; and all variety or difference of existence must 
needs arise from some external cause, and be dependent upon it.” And 
again: “To suppose two or more distinct beings existing of themselves 
necessarily, and independent of each other, implies this contradictior., 
that each of them being independent of each other, they may either of 
them be supposed to exist alone, so that it will be no contradiction to 
suppose the other not to exist, and consequently neither of them will be 
necessarily existing.” (Demonstration, Prop. 7.) These arguments 
being however wholly founded upon that peculiar notion of necessary 
existence, which is advocated by the author, derive their whole authority 
from the principle itself, to which some objections have been offered. 

The argument from space must share the same fate. If space be an 
infinite attribute of an infinite substance, and an essential attribute of 
Deity, then the existence of one infinite substance, and one only, may 
probably be argued from the existence of this infinite property ; but if 
space be a mere negation, and neither substance nor attribute, which has 
been sufficiently proved by the writers before referred to, then it is worth 


aothing as a proof of the unity of God. 
Vot. I. 22, 


338 THEOLCGICAL INSTITUTES. . [PART 


Wollaston argues, that if two or more independent beings exist, their 
natures must be the same or different; if different, either contrary or 
various. [f contrary, each must destroy the operations of the other ; 
if various, one must have what the other wants, and both cannot be 
perfect. If their nature be perfectly the same, then they would coin 
cide, and indeed be but one, though called two. (Religion of Nature.) 

Bishop Wilkins says, if God be an infinitely perfect being, it is 
impossible to imagine two such beings at the same time, because they 
must have several perfections, or the same. If the former, neither of 
them can be God, because neither of them has all possible perfections. 
If they have both equal perfections, neither of them can be absolutely 
perfect, because it is not so great to have the same equal perfections 
in common with another, as to be superior to all others. (Principles of 
Natural Religion.) ; 

«The nature of Ged,” says Bishop Pearson, “ consists in this, that 
he is the prime and original cause of all things, as an independent 
being, upon whom all things else depend, and likewise the ultimate end 
or final cause of all; but in this sense, two prime causes are unima- 
ginable, and for all things to depend on one, and yet for there to be 
more independent beings than one, is a clear contradiction.” (Exposition 
of the Creed.) 

The best argument of this kind is however that which arises from 
absolute perfection, the idea of which forces itself upon our minds, when 
we reflect upon the nature of a self-existent and independent Being. 
Such a being there is, as is sufficiently proved from the existence of 
beings dependent and derived ; and it is impossible to admit that without 
concluding, that he who is independent and underived, who subsists 
wholly and only of himself without depending on any other, must owe 
this absoluteness to so peculiar an excellency of its own nature as we 
cannot well conceive to be less than that by which it comprehends in 
itself the most boundless and unlimited fulness of being, life, power, or 
whatsoever can be conceived under the name of a perfection. “To 
such a being infinity may be justly ascribed; and infinity, not extrin. 
sically considered with respect to time and place, but intrinsically, as 
imparting bottomless profundity of essence, and the full confluence of 
all kinds and degrees of perfection without bound or limit.” (Hewe’s 
Living Temple.) ‘Limitation is the effect of some superior cause, 
which, in the present instance, there cannot be: consequently, to sup- 
pose limits where there can be no limiter, is to suppose an effect with- 
out a cause. For a being to be limited or deficient in any respect, is te 
be dependent in that respect on some other bemg which. gave it just 
so much and no more; consequently that being which in no respeet 
devends upon any other, is in no respect limited or deficient. In all 
heings capable of increase or diminution, and consequently incapable 


SECOND. |] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 339 


verfection or absolute infinity, limitation or defect is indeed a necessary 
tonsequence of existence, and is only a negation of that perfection 
which is wholly incompatible with their nature; and therefore in these 
beings it requires no farther cause. But in a being naturally capable 
of perfection or absolute infinity, all imperfection or finiteness, as it 
cannot flow from the nature of that being, seems to require some ground 
or reason; which reason, as it is foreign from the being itself, must be 
tne effect of some other external cause, and consequently cannot have 
place in the first cause. That the self-existent being is capable of per- 
fection or absolute infinity must be granted, because he is manifestly the 
subject of one infinite or perfect attribute, namely, eternity or absolute 
invariable existence. In this respect his existence is perfect, and there- 
fore it may be perfect in every other respect also. Now that which is 
the subject of one infinite attribute or perfection, must have all its attri- 
butes infinitely or in perfection; since to have any perfections in a 
finite limited manner, when the subject and these perfections are both 
capable of strict infinity, would be the fore-mentioned absurdity of 
positive limitation without a cause. ‘To suppose this eternal and inde- 
pendent Being limited in or by its own nature, is to suppose some ante- 
cedent nature or limiting quality superior to that being, to the existence 
of which no thing, no quality, is in any respect antecedent or superior. 
The same method of reasoning will prove knowledge and every other 
perfection to be infinite in the Deity, when once we have proved that 
perfection to belong to him at all; at least it will show, that to suppose 
it limited is unreasonable, since we can find no manner of ground for 
limitation in any respect; and this is as far as we need go, or perhaps 
as natural light will lead us.” (Dr. GLEIG.) 

The connection between the steps of the argument from the self- 
existence and infinity of the Deity to his unity, may be thus traced. 
There is actually existing an absolute, entire fulness of wisdom, power, 
and of all other perfection. This absolute entire fulness of perfection 
is infinite. This infinite perfection must have its seat somewhere. Its 
primary original seat can be nowhere but in necessary self-subsisting 
reing. Ifthen we suppose a plurality of self-originate beings concurring to 
»aaive up the seat or subject of this infinite perfection, each one must either 
be ot “nite and partial perfection, or infinite and absolute. Infinite and 
absolute it cannot be, because one self-originate, infinitely and absolutely 
perfect being, will necessarily comprehend all perfection, and leave 
nuthing to the rest. Nor finite, because many finites can never make 
one wfinite; nor many broken parcels or fragments of perfection ever 
make intinite and absolute perfection, even though their number, if that 
were possible, were infinite. 

To these arguments from the Divine nature, proofs of his unity are to 
oe drawn from his works. While we have no revelation of or from any 


340 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. PART 


other being than from him whom we worship as Gop ; so the frame and 
constitution of nature present us with a harmony and order which show, 
that their Creator and Preserver is but one. We see but ‘one will and 
one intelligence, and therefore there is but one Being. The light of this 
truth must have been greatly obscured to heathens, who knew not 
how to account for the admixture of good and evil which are in th3 
world, and many of them therefore supposed both a good and an evil 
deity. ‘To us, however, who know how to account for this fact from 
the relation in which man stands to the moral government of an offended 
Deity, and the connection of this present state with another ; and that it 
is to man a state of correction and discipline ; not only is this diffi- 
culty removed, but additional proof is afforded, that the Creator and the 
Ruler of the world is but one Being. If two independent beings of equal 
power concurred to make the world, the good and the evil would be 
equal; but the good predominates.—Between the good and the evil there 
could also be no harmony or connection ; but we plainly see evil sub- 
jected to the purposes of benevolence, and so to accord with it, which at 
once removes the objection. 

“Of the unity of the Deity,” says Paley, “the proof is the uniformity 
of plan observable in the universe. ‘The universe itself is a system ; 
each part either depending upon other parts, or being connected with 
other parts by some common law of motion, or by the presence of some 
common substance. One principle of gravitation causes a stone to drop 
toward the earth, and the moon to wheel round it. One law of attrac- 
tion carries all the different planets about the sun. This, philosophers 
demonstrate. There are also other points of agreement among them, 
which may be considered as marks of the identity of their origin, and 
of their intelligent author. In all are found the conveniency and stability 
derived from gravitation. They all experience vicissitudes of days and 
nights, and changes of season. ‘They all, at least Jupiter, Mars, and 
Venus, have the same advantages from their atmospheres as we have. 
In all the planets, the axes of rotation are permanent. Nothing is more 
probable than that the same attracting influence, acting according to the 
same rule,.reaches to the fixed stars ; but if this be only probable, another 
thing is certain, namely, that the same element of light does. The light 
from. a fixed star affects our eyes in the same manner, is refracted and 
reflected according to the same laws, as the light of a candle. The 
velocity of the light of the fixed stars is also the same, as the velocity 
of the light of the sun, reflected from the satellites of Jupiter. The 
heat of the: sun, in kind, differs nothing from the heat of a coal fire. 

“Tn our own globe the case is clearer. New countries are continu 
ally discovered, but the old laws of nature are always found in them; 
new plants, perhaps, or animals, but always in company with plants and 
animals: which we already know; and always possessing many of the 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 34] 


same gencral properties. We never get among such original or totally 
‘different modes of existence, as to indicate that we are come into the 
province of a different Creator, or under the direction of a different will. 
In truth, the same order of things attends us wherever we go. The ele. 
ments act upon one another, electricity operates, the tides rise and fall, 
the magnetic needle elects its position in one region of the earth and sea 
as well as in another. One atmosphere invests all parts of the globe 
and connects all; one sun illuminates; one moon exerts its specific 
attraction upon all parts. If there be a variety in natural effects, as, for 
example, in the tides of different seas, that very variety is the result of 
the same cause, acting under different circumstances. In many cases 
this is proved; in all, is probable. 

“ The inspection and comparison of living forms add to this argument 
examples without number. Of all large terrestrial animals, the struc- 
ture is very much alike; their senses nearly the same; their natural 
functions and passions nearly the same ; their viscera nearly the same, 
both in substance, shape, and office; digestion, nutrition, circulation, 
secretion, go on, in a similar manner, in all; the great circulating fluid 
is the same; for I think no difference has been discovered in the pro- 
perties of blood from whatever animal it bedrawn. The experiment of 
transfusion proves that the blood of one animal will serve for another. 
The skeletons also of the larger terrestrial animals show particular 
varieties, but still under a great general affinity. The resemblance is 
somewhat less, yet sufficiently evident, between quadrupeds and birds. 
They are all alike in five respects, for one in which they differ. 

“In fish, which belong to another department, as it were, of nature, 
the points of comparison become fewer. But we never lose sight of 
our analogy; e. g. we still meet with a stomach, a liver, a spine; with 
bile and bleod; with teeth; with eyes, which eyes are only slightly 
varied from our own, and which variation, in truth demonstrates, not an 
interruption, but a continuance of the same exquisite plan; for it is the 
adaptation of the organ to the element, namely, to the different refrac- 
tion of light passing into the eye out of a denser medium. ‘The pro- 
vinces, also, themselves of water and earth, are connected by the species 
of animals which inhabit both; and also by a large tribe of aquatic ani- 
mals, which closely resemble the terrestrial in their internal structure ; 
{ mean the cetaceous tribe which have hot blood, respiring lungs, bowels, 
and other essential parts, like those of land animals. This similitude 
surely bespeaks the same creation, and the same Creator. 

“Insects and shell fish appear to me to differ from other classes of 
animals the most widely of any. Yet even here, beside many points of 
particular resemblance, there exists a general relation of a peculiar kind. 
It is the relation of inversion ; the law of contrariety: namely, that 
whereas in other animals, the bones to which the muscles are attacned 


342 THEOLOGICAL iNSTITUTES, [PARTY 


lie within the body; m insects and shell fish they lie on the oulseae 
of it. The shell of a lobster performs to the animal the office of a bone, 
by furnishing to the tendons that fixed basis or immovable fulcrum, wit. 
out which mechanically they could not act. The crust of an insect is 
its shell, and answers the like purpose. The shell also of an oyster 
stands in the place of a bone; the basis of the muscles being fixed te it, 
in the same manner as, in other animals, they are fixed to the bones. 
All which (under wonderful varieties, indeed, and adaptations of form) 
confesses an imitation, a remembrance, a carrying on of the same plan.” 

If in a large house, wherein are many mansions and a vast variety of 
inhabitants, there appears exact order, all from the highest to the lowest 
continually attending their proper business, and all lodged and constantly 
provided for suitably to their several conditions, we find ourselves obliged 
to acknoweldge one wise economy ; and if in a great city or common. 
wealth there is a perfectly regular administration, so that not only the 
‘whole society enjoys an undisturbed peace, but every member has a 
station assigned him which he is best qualified to fill, the unenvied chiefs 
constantly attending their more important cares, served by the busy 
inferiors, who have all a suitable accommodation, and food convenient 
for them, the very meanest ministering to the public utility, and protected 
by the public care ;—if, [ say, in such a community we must conclude 
there is a ruling counsel, which if not naturally yet is politically one, 
and unless united, could not produce such harmony and order: much 
more have we reason to recognize one governing Intelligence-in the 
earth, in which there are so many ranks of beings disposed of in the most 
convenient manner, having all their several provinces appointed to them, 
and their several kinds and degrees of enjoyment liberally provided for, 
without encroaching upon, but rather being mutually useful to each other, 
according to a settled and obvious subordination. What else can account 
for this but a sovereign wisdom, a common provident nature presiding 
over, and caring for the whole? (Abernethy’s Sermons.) 

The importance of the doctrine of the Divine unity is obvious. The 
existence of one God is the basis of all true religion. Polytheism con- 
founds and unsettles all moral distinction, divides and destroys obligation, 
and takes away all sure trust and hope from man. There is one God 
wo created us; we are therefore his property, and bound to him by an 
a! solute obligation of obedience. He is the sole Ruler of the world, and 
| \s une immutable will constitutes the one immutable law of our actions, 
avd thus questions of morality are settled on permanent foundations. 
To him alone we owe repentance, and confession of sin; to one Being 
alone we are directed to look for pardon, in the method he has appointed ; 
and if he be at peace with us, we need fear the wrath of no other, tor he 
is supreme: we are not at a loss among a crowd 9f supposed deities, to 
which of them we shall turn in trouble; he alone receives prayer, and 


. 


SECOND. THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 343 


he is the sole and sufficient object of trust. When we know Him, we 
Anow a Being of absolute perfection, and need no other friend or 
refuge. 

Among the discoveries made to us by Divine revelation, we find not 
only declarations of the existence and unity of God, but of his nature or 
substance, which is plainly affirmed to be spiritual; “ God is a Sprrrr.” 
The sense of the Scriptures in this respect cannot be mistaken. Innu- 
merable passages and allusions in them show, that the terms spirit and 
body, or matter, are used in the popular sense for substances of a perfectly 
distinct kind, and which are manifested by distinct and in many respects 
opposite and incommunicable properties: that the former only can per- 
veive, think, reason, will, and act ; that the latter is passive, inpercipient, 
divisible, and corruptible. Under these views, and in this popular lan- 
guage, God is spoken of in Holy Writ. He is spirit, not body; ind, 
not matter. He is pure spirit, unconnected even with bodily form or 
organs ; “the invisible God, whom no man hath seen nor can see,” an 
immaterial, incorruptible, impassible substance, an immense mind or 
intelligence, self acting, self moving, wholly above the perception of 
bodily sense; free from the imperfections of matter, and all the imfirmi- 
ties of corporeal beings ; far more excellent than any finite and created 
spirits, because their Creator, and therefore styled, “the Father of 
spirits,” and “the God of the spirits of all flesh.” 

Such is the express testimony of Scripture as to the Divine nature. 
That the distinction which it holds between matter and spirit should be 
denied or disregarded by infidel philosophers, is not a matter of surprise, 
since it is easy and as consistent in them to materialize God as man. 
But that the attributes of spirit should have been ascribed to matter 
by those who nevertheless profess to admit the authority of the Biblical 
revelation, as in the case of the modern Unitarians and some others, is 
an instance of singular inconsistency. It shows with what daring an - 
unhallowed philosophy will pursue its speculations, and warrants the con- 
clusion, that the Scriptures in such cases are not acknowledged upon 
their own proper principles, but only so far as they are supposed to agree 
with, or not to oppose the philosophic system which such men may have 
adopted. For hesitate as they may, to deny the distinction between matter 
and spirit, is to deny the spirituality of God; and to contradict the dis- 
tinction which, as to man, is constantly kept up in every part of 
the Bible, the distinction between flesh and spirit. To assert that con- 
sciousness, thought, volition, &c, are the results of organization, is to deny 
also what the Scripture so expressly affirms, that the souls of men exist 
in a disembodied state: and that in this disembodied state, not only do 
they exist, but that they think and feel, and act without any diminution of | 
their energy or capacity. The immateriality of the Divine Being may 
therefore be considered as a point of great importance, not only as it aflects 


344 THEOLCGICAL INSTITUTES, [PART 


our views of his nature and attributes; but because when once it 1s 
established that there exists a pure Spirit, living, intelligent, and invested 
with moral properties, the question of the immateriality of the human 
soul may be considered as almost settled. Those who deny that, must 
admit that the Deity is material ; or if they start at this, they inust be 
convicted of the unphilosophical and absurd attempt to invest a substance 
allowed to be of an entirely different nature, the body of man, with 
those attributes of intelligence and volition which, in the case of the 
Divine Being, they have allowed to be the properties of pure, unem- 
bodied spirit. ‘The propositions are totally inconsistent, for they who 
believe that God is wholly an immaterial, and that man is wholly a 
material being, admit that spirit is intelligent, and that matter is intell1- 
gent. They cannot then be of different essences, and if the premises 
be followed out to their legitimate concltsion, either that which thinks 
in man must be allowed to be spiritual, or a material Deity must follow. 
The whole truth of revelation, both as to God and his creature man, 
must be acknowledged, or the Atheism of Spinoza and Hobbes must be 
admitted. 

The decision of Scripture on this point is not to be shaken by human 
reasoning, were it more plausible in its attempt to prove that matter is 
capable of originating thought, and that mind is a mere result of organi- 
zation. ‘The evidence from reason is however highly confirmatory of 
the absolute spirituality of the nature of God, and of the unthinking 
nature of matter. 

If we allow a First Cause at all, we must allow that cause to be intel- 
ligent. This has already been: proved, from the design and contrivance 
manifested in his works. The first argument for the spirituality of 
God is therefore drawn from his intelligence, and it rests upon this prin- 
ciple, that intelligence is not a property of matter. 

With material substance we are largely acquainted ; and as to the 
creat mass of material bodies, we have the means of knowing that they 
are wholly unintelligent. This cannot be denied’ of every unorganized 
portion of matter. Its essential properties are found to be solidity, ex- 
tension, divisibility, mobility, passiveness, &c. In all its forms and 
mutations, from the granite rock to the vielding atmosphere and the 
rapid lightning, these essential properties are discovered ; they take an 
infinite variety of accidental modes, but give no indication of intelligence, 
01 approach to intelligence. If then to know be a property of matter, it 
is clearly not an essential property, inasmuch as it is agreed by all, that 
vast masses of. this substance exist without this property, and it follows, 
that it must be an accidental one. This therefore would be the first 
absurdity, inte which those would be driven who suppose the Divine na- 
ture to be material, that as intelligence, if allowed to be a property of 
matter, is an accidental and not an essential property, on this theorv # 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 34é 


would be possible to conceive of the existence of a Deity without any 
intelligence at all. For take away any property from a subject which 
& not essential to it, and its essence still remains; and if intelligence, 
which in this view is but an accidental attribute of Deity, were annihi- 
sated, a Deity without perception, thought, or knowledge, would still re- 
main. So monstrous a conclusion shows, that if a God be at all allowed, 
the absolute spirituality of his nature must inevitably follow. For if we 


cannot suppose a Deity without intelligence, then do we admit antelli- * 


gence to be one of his essential attributes ; and, as it is easy for every 
one to observe that this is not an essential property of matter, the sub. 
stance to which it is essential cannot be material. 

If the unthinking nature of unorganized matter furnishes an argu- 
ment in favour of the spirituality of Deity, the attempt to prove from 
tne fact of intelligence being found in connection with matter in an 
organized form, that intelligence, under certain modifications, is a pro- 
perty of matter, may from its fallacy be also made to yield its evidence 
in favour of the truth. 

The position assumed is, that intelligence is the result of material 
organization. ‘This at least is not true of every form of organized mat- 
ter. Of the unintelligent character of vegetables we have the same 
evidence as of the earth on which we tread. The organization there- 
fore which is assumed to be the cause of thought, is that which is found 
in animals ; and to use the argument of Dr. Priestley, “the powers of 
sensation, or perception, and thought, as belonging to man, not having 
been found but in conjunction with a certain organized system of matter, 
the conclusion is that they depend upon such a system.” It need not 
now be urged, that constant connection does not imply necessary con- 
nection; and that sufficient reasons may be given to prove the connec. 
tion alleged to be accidental and arbitrary. It is sufficient in the first 
instance to deny this supposed constant connection between. intellectua) 
properties and systems of animal organization; and thus to take away 
entirely the foundation*of the argument. 

Man is to be considered in two states, that of life, and that of death 
In one he thinks, and in the other he ceases te think ; and yet for some 
lime after death, in many cases, the organization of the human frame 
continues as perfect as before. All do not die of organic disease, 
Death by suffocation, and other causes, is often effected without any 
visible violence being done to the brain, or any other of the most dell. 
cate organs. This is a well established fact ; for the most accurate ana. 
tomical observation is not able to discover, in such cases as we have re. 
ferred to, the slightest organic derangement. The machine has been 
stupped, but the machine itself.nas suffered no injury; and from the 
_ period of death to the time when the matter of the body begins to sub. 
mit to the laws of chemical decomposition, its organization is as perfect 


- 


346 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, [PART 


as during life. If an opponent replies, that organic violence mus/ have 
been sustained, though it is- indiscernible, he begs the question, and 
assumes that thought must depend upon organization, the very point in 
dispute. If more modest, he says, that the organs may have suffered, 
he can give uo proof of it; appearances are all against him. And if he 
argues from the phenomenon of the connection of thought with organi- 
zation, grounding himself upon what is visible to observation only, the 
‘argument is completely repulsed by an appeal in like manner to the fact, 
that the organization of the animal frame can be often exhibited, visibly 
unimpaired by those causes which have produced death, and yet incapa- 
ble of thought and intelligence. The conclusion therefore is, that mere 
organization cannot be the cause of intelligence, since it is plain that 
precisely the same state of the organs shall often be found before and 
after death ; and yet, without any violencé having been done to them, in 
one moment man shall be actually intelligent, and in the next incapable 
of a thought. So far then from the connection between mental pheno- 
mena, and the arrangement of matter in the animal structure being 
“constant,” the ground of the argument of Priestley and other material- 
ists ; it is often visibly broken; fora perfect organization of the animal 
remains after perception has become extinct. 

In support of this argument, we may urge the representations of 
Scripture, upon that class of materialists who have not proceeded to the 
full length of denying its authority. Adam was formed out of the dust 
of the earth, the organism of his frame was therefore complete, before 
he became “a living soul.” God breathed into him “the breath of 
lives,” and whatever different persons may understand by that inspira- 
tion it certainly was not an organizing operation. ‘The man was first 
formed or organized, and then life was imparted. Before the animating 
breath was inspired, he was not intelligent, because he lived not; yet 
the organization was complete before either life or the power of percep- 
tion was imparted; thought did not arise out of his organic structure, 
as an effect from its cause. 

The doctrine that mere organization is the cause of. perception, &c, 
being clearly untenable, we shall probably be told, that the subject sup- 
posed in the argument, is a living organized being. If so, then the 
proof that matter can think drawn from organization is given up, and 
another cause of the phenomenon of intelligence is introduced. This ‘s 
life, and the argument will be considerably altered. It will ro longer be, 
as we have before quoted it from Dr. Priestley, “that the powers of 
sensation or perception and thought, never having been found but in 
conjunction with a certain organized system of matter, the conclusion is 
that they depend upon such a system ;” but that these powers not hav- 
ing been found but in conjunction with animal [ife, they depend upon that 
as their cause. 


SECOND. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 347 


What then is life, which is thus exhibited as the cause of intelligence, 
and as the proof that matter is capable of perception and thought? In 
its largest and commonly received sense, it is that inherent activity 
which distinguishes vegetable and animal bodies from the soils in which 
the former grow, and on which the latter tread. A vegetable is said to 
live, because it has motion within itself, and is capable of absorption, 
secretion, nutrition, growth, and the reproduction of its kind. With al 
this it exhibits no mental phenomena, no sensation, no consciousness, no 
volition, no reflection; in a word, it is utterly unintelligent. We have 
here a proof then as satisfactory as our argument from organization, 

‘that life, at least life of any kind, is not the cause of intelligence, for 
m ten thousand instances we see it existing in bodies to which it imparts 
no mental properties at all. 

If then it be said that the life intended as the cause of intelligence is 
not vegetable, but animal life, the next step in the inquiry. is, in what the 
life of an animal differs from that of a vegetable ; and if we go into the 
camp of the enemy himself, we shall find him laying it down, that to 
animals a double life belongs, the organic and the animal, the former ot 
which animals, and even man, has only in common with the vegetable. 
One modification of life, says Bichat, (upon whose scheme our modern 
materialists have modelled their arguments,) is common to vegetables 
and animals, the other peculiar to the latter. “Compare together two 
individuals, one taken from each of these kingdoms: one exists only 
within itself, has no other relations to external objects than those of 
nutrition ; is born, grows, and perishes, attached to the soil which re- 
ceived its germ. The other joins to this znternal life, which it possesses 
in a still higher degree, an external life, which establishes numerous 
relations between it and the neighbouring objects, unites its existence to 
that of other beings, and draws it near to, or removes it from them, ac- 
cording to its wants and fears.” (Recherches sur la vie et la mort.) 'This 
is only in other words to say, that there is one kind of life in man, which, 
as in the vegetable, is the cause of growth, circulation, assimilation, 
nutrition, excretion, and similar functions ; and another on which depend 
sensation, the passions, will, memory, and other attributes which we 
attribute to spirit. We have gained then by this distinction another step 
in the argument. There is a life common to animals and to vegetables. 
Whether this be simple mechanism or something more, matters nothing 
to the conclusion; it confers neither sensation, nor volition, nor reason. 
That life in men, and in the inferior animals, which is common to them 
and to vegetables, called, by Bichat and his followers, organic life, is 
evidently not the cause of intelligence. 

What then is that higher species of life called anzmal life, on which 
we are told our mental powers depend? And here the French materialist, 
whose notions have been so readily adopted into our own schools of 


ue 


348 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. ; [PART 


physiology, shall speak for himself. «The functions of the animal form 
two distinct classes. One of these consists of an habitual succession of 
assimilation and concretion, by which it is constantly transforming into 
its own substance the particles of other bodies, and then rejecting them 
when they have become useless. By the other he perceives surround. 
ing objects ; reflects on his sensations, performs voluntary motions under 
their influence, and generally communicates, by the voice, his pleasures 
or pains ; his desires or fears.” ‘ The assembled functions of the second 
class form the animal life.” 

This strange definition of life has been adopted by Lawrence, and 
other disciples of the French school of materialism ; but its absurdity as” 
a definition is obvious, and could only have been adopted as a veil of 
words to hide a conclusion fatal to the,favourite system. So far from 
being a definition of life, it is no more than a description of the 
“functions” of a vital principle or power, whatever that power or princi- 
ple may be. Function is a manner in which any power developes itself, 
or as Lawrence, the disciple of Bichat, has properly expressed it, “a 
mode of action ;” and to say that an assemblage of the modes in which 
any thing acts, is that which acts, or “ forms” that which acts, is the 
createst possible trifling and folly. 

But Bichat is not the only one of modern materialists who refuse 
honestly to pursue the inquiry, “ what is life?’ when even affecting to 
describe or defend it. Cuvier, another great authority in the same 
school, at one time says, that be life what it may, it cannot be what the 
vulgar suppose it, a particular principle. (Principe particulier.) In ano- 
ther place he acknowledges that life can proceed only from life. (La 
vie nait que de Ja vie.) Then again he considers it an internal nrinciple ; 
(un principe interieur d’entretien et de reparation ;) and last u! all says, 
what Mr. Lawrence has since repeated verbatim, that life consists in the 
sum total of all the functions. (I] consiste dans |’ensemble des functions 
qui servent a nourir le corps, c’est a dire la digestion, l’absorption, la 
circulation, &c.) ‘Thus he makes life a cause which owes its existence 
to its own operations, and consequently a cause which, had it not ope- 
rated to produce itself, had never operated nor existed at all! (Vide 
Medical Review, Sept. 1822, Art. 1.) “It is truly pitiful,” says a 
physiologist of other opinions, “to think of a man with so many endow. 
ments, natural and acquired, driven as if blindfold by the fashion of the 
times, a contemptible vanity, or some wretched inclination, endeavouring 
to support with all his energy the extravagant idea that the phenomena 
of design and intelligence displaved in the form and structure of his 
species might have been the effects of some impulse or motion, or of 
some group of functions, as digestion, circulation, respiration, &e, 
wich have accidentally happened to meet without any assignable caure 


SECOND. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 349 


to bring them together, to hold them together, or to direct them.” (Dr. 
Barclay on Life and Organization.) 

These and many other examples are in proof, that the cause uf vital 
oroperties cannot, we do not say be explained, but cannot even be indi- 
cated on the material system; and we are no nearer, for any thing 
which these physiologists say, to any satisfactory account of that life 
which is peculiar to animals, and which has been distinguished from the 
vrganic life that is common to them and to vegetables. It is not the 
result of organization, for that “is no living principle, no active cause.” 
“ An organ is an instrument. Organization therefore is nothing more 
than a system of parts so constructed and arranged as to co-operate to 
one common purpose. It is an arrangement of instruments, and there 
must be something beyond to bring these instruments into action.” (Ren- 
nell’s Remarks on Skepticism.) If life cannot therefore be organization 
or the effect of it, it is not that inherent, mechanical, and chemical mo- 
tion which is called life in vegetables, and which the physiologists have 
decided to be the same kind of life which they call organic in animals ; 
for even the materialist acknowledges that to be a different species of 
life in animals, on which sensation, volition, and passion depend. What 
then is it? It is not a material substance ; in that all agree. It is not 
the material effect of the material cause, organization; that has been 
shown to be absurd. It is not that mechanical and chemical inherent 
motion which performs so many functions in vegetables and in animals, 
so far as they have it in common with them; for no sensation or other 
mental phenomena are allowed to result from these. It is therefore 
plainly no material cause and no effect of matter at all; for no other 
hypothesis remains but that which places its source in an zmmaterial sub- 
iect, operating upon and by material organs. For, to quote from a 
writer just mentioned, “that there is some invisible agent in every living 
organized system, seems to be an inference to which we are led almost 
irresistibly. When we see an animal starting from its sleep, contrary 
to the known laws of gravitation, without an external or elastic impulse, 
without the appearance of electricity, galvanism, magnetism, or chemical 
attraction: when we see it afterward moving its limbs in various direc- 
tions, with different degrees of force and velocity, sometimes suspending 
and sometimes renewing the same motions, at the sound of a word or 
the sight of a shadow, can we refrain a moment from thinking that the 
cause of these phenomena is internal, that it is something different from 
the body, and that the several bodily organs are nothing more than the 
mere instruments which it employs in its operations? Not instruments 
indeed that can be manufactured, purchased, or exchanged, or that can 
at pleasure be varied in form, position, number, proportion, or magni- 
tude ; not instruments whose motions are dependent upon an externa! 
impulse, on gravity, elasticity, magnetism, galvanism, on electricity or 


# 
750 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PAK? 


chemical! attraction ; but instruments of a peculiar nature, instruments 
that grow, that are moved by the will, and which can be regulated and 
kept in repair by no agent but the one for which they were primarily 
destined ; instruments so closely related to that agent, that they cannot 
be injured, handled or breathed upon, approached by cold, by wind, by 
rain, without exciting in it certain sensations of pleasure or of pain; 
sensations which, if either unusual or excessive, are generally accompa. 
nied with joy or grief, hopes or alarms: instruments, in short, that exert 
so constant and powerful reaction on the agent that employs tem, that 
they modify almost every phenomenon which it exhibits, and to such an 
extent, that no person can confidently say what would be the effect of 
its energies if deprived of instruments; or what would be the effect of 
i's energies if furnished with instrumentsaof a different species, or if fur. 
nished with instruments of different materials, less dependent on external 
circumstances, and less subject to the laws of gross and inert matter.” 
(Barclay on Life and Organization.) 

Life, then, whether organic or animal, is not the cause of mtelligence, 
und thus all true reasoning upon these phenomena brings us to the phi- 
losophy of the Scriptures, that the presence of an immaterial soul with 
the body, is the source of animal life; and that the separation of the 
soul {rom the body is that circumstance which causes death. (6) Far- 
ther proofs however are not wanting, that matter is incapable of thought 
and that its various qualities are inconsistent with mental phenomena. 

‘« [xtension 1s a universal quality of matter; being that cohesion and 
continuity of its parts by which a body occupies space. The idea of 
extension is gained by our external senses of signt and of touch. But 
thought is neither visible nor tangible, it occupies no external space, it 
has no contiguous or cohering parts. A mind enlarged by education 
and science, a memory stored with the richest treasures of varied know 
udge, occupies no more space than that of the meanest and most illite 
rate rustic. 

“In body again we find a vis inerti@, that is, a certain quality by 
which it resists any change in its present state. We know by experi- 
ment, that a body, when it has received an impulse, will persevere in a 


(6) The celebrated Hunter, ‘‘in searching for the principle of life, on the sup. 
position that it was something visible, fruitlessly enough looked for it in the blu: d, 
the chyle, the brain, the lungs, and other parts of the body; but not finding it in 
any of them exclusively, concluded that it must be a consequence of the union 
of the whole, and depend upon organism. But to this conclusion-he sould not 
long adhere, after observing that the composition of matter does not give life; 
and that a dead body may have all the composition it ever had. Last of all, he 
drew the true, or at least the candid conclusion, that he knew nothing about the 
matter.” (Medico-Chirurgical Review, Sept. 1822.) This is the conclusion to 
which mere philosophy comes, and the only one at which it can arrive, till it 
stoops to believe that there is true philosophy in the Scriptures. 


SECOND.) ' THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE . Jol 


direct course and a uniform velocity, until its motion shall be either dis. 
turbed or retarded by some external power; and again, that, being at 
rest, 1t will remain so for ever, unless motion shall have been communi. 
eated to it from without. Since matter therefore necessarily resists all 
change of its present state, its motion and its rest are purely passive ; 
Spo..taneous motion, therefore, must have some other origin. Nor is 
this spontaneous motion to be attributed to the simple powers of life, for 
we have seen that in the life of vegetation there is no spontaneous mo- 
tion; the plant has no power either to remove itself out of the position 
in which it is fixed, or even to accelerate or retard the motion which 
takes place within it. Nor has man himself, in a sleep perfectly sound, 
the power of locomotion any more than a plant, nor any command over 
the various active processes which are going on within his own body. 
But when he is awake, he will rise from his resting place—if mere mat- 
ter, whether living or dead were concerned, he would. have remained 
there like a plant or a stone for ever. He will walk forward—he will 
change his course—he will stop. Can matter, even though endowed 
with the life of vegetation, perform any such acts as these? Here is 
motion fairly begun without any external impulse, and stopped without 
any external obstacle. The activity of a plant, on the contrary, is nei- 
ther spontaneous nor locomotive; it is derived in regular succession 
from parent substances, and it can be stopped only by external obstacles, 
such as the disturbance of the organization. A mass even of living mat- 
ter requires something beyond its own powers to overcome the vis 
inertte which still distinguishes it, and to produce active and spontaneous 
motion. | 

“ Hardness and impenetrability are qualities of matter; but no one 
of common sense, without a very palpable metaphor, could ever consider 
them as the properties of thought. 

“ There is another property of matter, which is, if possible, still more 
inconsistent with thought than any of the former, I mean its divisibility. 
Let us take any material substance, the brain, the heart, or any other 
body ; which we would have endowed with thought, and inquire of what 
is this substance composed. It is the aggregate of an indefinite number 
ot separable and separate parts. Now the experience of what passes 
within our minds will inform us, that unity is essential to a thinking 
being. That consciousness which establishes the one individual being, 
which every man knows himself to be, cannot, without a contradiction 
in terms, be separated, or divided. No man can think in two separate 
places at the same time: nor, again, is his ccmsciousness made up of a 
number of ‘separate consciousnesses ; as the solidity, the colour, and 
motion of the whole body is made up of the distinct sclidities, colours, 
and motions of its parts. As a thinking and a conscious being, then, ~ 
man must be essentially one. As a partaker of the life of vegetation 


352 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. es [PART 


he is separable into ten thousand different parts. If then it is the prain 
of a man which is conscious and thinks, his consciousness and thought 
must be made up of as many separate parts as there are particles in its 
material substance. which is contrary to common sense and experience. 
Whatever, therefore, our thought may be, or in whatever it may reside, 
it is essentially indivisible ; and, therefore, wholly inconsistent with the 
divisibility of a material substance. 

“From every quality, therefore, of matter, with which we are ace 
quainted, we shall be warranted in concluding, that without a contra 
diction in terms, it cannot be pronounced capable of thought. A thing. 
ing substance may be combined with a stone, a tree, or an animal body , 
but not one of the three can of itself become a thinking being.” (Ren- 
nell on Skepticism.) “ 

‘The notions we annex to the words, MATTER and MIND, as 1s well 
remarked by Dr. Reid, are merely relative. If I am asked, what 1 
mean by matter? I can only explain myself by saying, it is that which 
is extended, figured, coloured, movable, hard or soft, rough or smooth, 
hot or cold ;—that is, I can define it in no other way than by enume- 
rating its sensible qualities. It is not matter or body which I perceive 
by my senses ; but only extension, figure, colour, and certain other quali- 
ties, which the constitution of my nature leads me to refer to something 
which is extended, figured, and coloured. The case is precisely similar 
with respect to mind. We are not immediately conscious of its exist- 
ence, but we are conscious of sensation, thought, and volition ; operations 
which imply the existence of something which feels, thinks, and wills. 
Every man too is impressed with an irresistible conviction, that all these 
sensations, thoughts, and volitions, belong to one and the same being; 
to that being, which he calls himself; a being which he is led, by the 
constitution of his nature, to consider as something distinct from his 
body, and as not liable to be impaired by the loss or mutilation of any 
of his organs. 

“From these considerations, it appears that we have the same ev- 
dence for the existence of mind, that we have for the existence of body ; 
nay, if there be any difference between the two cases, that we have 
stronger evidence for it; inasmuch as the one is suggested to us by the 
subjects of our own consciousness, and the other merely by the objects 
of our perceptions.” (Stewart’s Essays.) 

Farther observations on the immateriality of the human soul will be ad- 
duced in their proper place. The reason why the preceding argument on 
this subject has been here introduced, is not only that the spirituality of 
the Divine nature might be established by proving that intelligence is not 
a material attribute; but to keep in view the connection between the 
spirituality of God, and that of man, who was made in his image; and 
‘o show the relation which also exists between the doctrine of the ma- 





SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, 3503 


terialism of the human soul, and absolute Atheism, and thus to hold out 
a Warning against such speculations. There is no middle course in fact, 
thougn one may be effected. If we materialize man, we must ma- 
terialize God, or, in other words, deny a First Cause, one of whose 
essential attributes is intelligence. it is then of little consequence what 
echeme of Atheism is adopted, On the other hand, if we ailow spiritu- 
ality to God, it follows as a necessary corollary, that we must allow n 
to man. ‘These doctrines stand or fall together. 

On a subject which arises out of the foregoing discussion, a single 
observation will be sufficient. It is granted that, on the premises laid 
down, not only must an immaterial principle be allowed to man, but to 
all animals possessed of volition; and few, perhaps none, are found 
without this property. But though this has often been urged as an ob. 
jection, it can cost the believer in revelation nothing to admit it. It 
strengthens, and does not weaken his argument; and it is perfeetly in 
accordance with Scripture, which speaks of “the soul of, a beast,” as 
well as of “the soul of man.” Vastly, nay, we might say, infinitely 
different are they in the class and degree of their powers, though of the 
same spiritual essence ; but they have both properties which cannot be 
attributed to matter. It does not, however, follow that they are zmmortal, 
because they are immaterial. The truth is, that God only hath inde- 
pendent immortality, because he only is self existent, and neither human 
nor brute souls are of necessity immortal. God hath given this privilege 
to man, not by a necessity of nature, which would be incompatible with 
dependence, but by his own will, and the continuance of his sustaining 
power. But he seems to have denied it to the inferior animals, and ac- 
cording to the language of Scripture, “the spirit of a beast goeth down- 
ward.” The doctrine of the natural immortality of man, will, however, 
be considered in its proper place. 


ra —— 


CHAPTER III. 
ATTRIBUTES of God—Eternity—Omnipotence—U biquity. 


From the Scriptures we have learned, that there is one God, the 
Creator of all things, and consequently living and intelligent. The 
detnonstrations of this truth, which surround us in the works of nature, 
have been also adverted to. By the same sacred revelations we have 
ulso been taught, that, as to the Divine essence, God is a Spirit ; and in 
the farther manifestations they have made of him, we learn, that as all 
things were made by him, he was before all things: that their being is 
dependent, his independent; that he is emmently Berne, according to 
nis own peculiar appellation “I am ;” self existent, and Ererna. In 


the Scripture doctrine of God, we, however, not only find it asserted 
Vor. I 23 


354 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PARI 


that God had no beginning, but that he shall have no end. Eternity 
ad partem post is ascribed to him, for in the most absolute sense, he 
hath “ immortality,” and he “only” hath it, by virtue of the inherent 
perfection of his nature. It is this which completes those sublime and 
impressive views of the eternity of God, with which the revelation he 
has been pleased to make of himself abounds. “ From everlasting te 
everlasting thou art God. Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the 
earth ; and the heavens are the work of thine hand. They shall perish, 
but thou shalt endure; yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment ; 
as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed; but 
thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.” He “ inhabiteth 
eternity,” fills and occupies the whole round of boundless duration, and 
“is the first and the last.” " 

In these representations of the eternal existence and absolute immor- 
tality of the Divine Being, something more than the mere idea of infinite 
duration is conveyed. Nocreature can, without contradiction, be sup- 
posed to have been from eternity ; but even a creature may be supposed 
to continue to exist for ever, in as strict a sense as God himself will 
continue to exist forever. Its existence, however, being originally de- 
pendent and derived, must continue so. It is not, so to speak, in its 
r.ature to live, or it would never have been non-existent ; and what it 
has not from itself, it has received, and must through every moment of 
actual existence receive from its Maker. But the very phrase in whict 
the Scriptures speak of the eternity of God, suggests a meaning deeper 
than that of mere duration. They contrast the stability of the Divine 
existence with the vanishing and changing nature of all his works, and 
represent them as reposing upon him for support, while he not only de- 
pends not upon any, but rests upon himself. He lives by virtue of his 
nature, and is essentially unchangeable. For to the nature of that which 
exists without cause, life must be essential. In him who is “ the fountain 
of life,” there can be no principle of decay. There can be no desire 
to cease to be, in him who is perfectly blessed, because of the unbounded 
excellence of his nature. ‘To him existence must be the source of 
infinite enjoyment, both from the contemplation of his own designs, and 
the manifestation of his glory, purity, and benevolence, to the intelligent 
creatures he has made to know and to be beatified by such discoveries 
and benefits. No external power can control, or in any way affect his 
felicity, his perfection or his being. Such are the depths of glory and 
peculiarity into which the Divine eternity, as stated in the Scriptures, 
leads the wondering mind; and of which the wisest of heathens, who 
ascribed immortality to one, or to many gods, had no conception. They 
were ever fancying something out of God, as the cause of their immortal 
being ; fate, or external necessity, or some similar and vague notion, 
which obscured, as to them, one of the peculiar glories of the ‘ eternal 





sECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 355 


power and Godhead,” who of and from his own essential nature, 1s, and 
“was, and SHALL BE. 

Some apprehensions of this great truth are seen in the sayings of 
few of the Greek sages, thuugh much obscured by their other notions. 
Indeed, that appropriate name of God, so venerated among the Jews, 
the nomen tetragrammaton, which we render JeHovau, was known 
among the heathens to be the name under which the Jews worshipped 
the supreme God; and “from this Divine name,” says Parkhurst, sub 
voce, “the ancient Greeks had their Ij In in their invocation of: the 
gods. (7) It expresses not the attributes, but the essence of God, which 
was the reason why the Jews deemed it ineffable. The Septuagint 


(7) A curious instance of the transmission of this name, and one of the pecu- 
liarities of the Hebrew faith, even into China, is mentioned in the following 
extract of ‘‘ A Memoir of Lao-tseu, a Chinese philosopher, who flourished in the 
sixth century before our era, and who professed the opinions ascribed to Plato 
and to Pythagoras.” (By M. Abel Remusat.)—‘‘ The metaphysics of Lao-tseu 
have many other remarkable features, which I have endeavoured to develope in 
my memoir, and which, for various reasons, I am obliged to pass over in silence. 
How, in fact, should I give an idea of those lofty abstractions, of those inextri- 
cable subtleties, in which the oriental imagination disports and goes astray? It 
will suffice to say here, that the opinions of the Chinese philosopher on the 
origin and constitution of the universe, have neither ridiculous fables nor 
offensive absurdities ; that they bear the stamp of a noble and elevated mind ; and 
that, in the sublime reveries which distinguish them, they exhibit a striking and 
incontestable conformity with the doctrine which was professed a little later by 
the schools of Pythagoras and Plato. Like the Pythagoreans and the Stoics, 
-our author admits, as the First Cause, Reason, an ineffable, uncreated Being, 
that is the type of the universe, and has no type but itself. Like Pythagoras, he 
takes human souls to be emanations of the ethereal substance, which are re- 
united with it after death; and, like Plato, he refuses to the wicked the faculty 
of returning into the bosom of the Universal Soul. Like Pythagoras, he gives 
to the first principles of things the names of numbers, and his cosmogony is, in 
some degree, algebraical. He attaches the chain of beings to that which he 
calls One, then to Two, then to Three, which have made all things. The 
divine Plato, who had adopted this mysterious dogma, seems to be afraid of re- 
vealing it to the profane. He envelopes it in clouds in his famous letter to the 
three friends ; he teaches it to Dionysius of Syracuse ; but by enigmas, as he says 
himself, lest his tablets falling into the hands of some stranger they should be 
read and understood. Perhaps the recollection of the recent death of Socrates 
‘mposed this reserve upon him. I.ao-tseu does not make use of these indirect 
ways; and what is most clear in his book is, that a Triune Being formed the 
aniverse. ‘To complete the singularity, he gives to his being a Hebrew name 
hardiy changed, the very name which in our book designates him, wHo was, 
AND ts, AND SHALL BE. This last circumstance confirms all that the tradition 
indicated of a journey to th> west, and leaves no doubt of the origin of his 
doctrine. Probably he received it either from the Jews of the ten tribes, whom 
‘the conquest of Sulmanazan had just dispersed throughout Asia, or from the 
upostles of some Phenician sect, to which those philosophers also belonged, who 
were the masters and precursors of Pvthaeo~as and Plato” 


/ 
356 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES ; [PART 


transiators preserved the sarme idea n the word Kupios, by which they 
translated it, from xvpw, sum,I am. This word is said by crities not to 
be classically used to signify God, which would mark the peculiarity of 
this appellation in the Septuagint version more strongly, and convey 
something of the great idea of the self, or absolute existence ascribed t3 
the Divine nature in the Hebrew Scriptures, to those of the heathen 
philosophers who met with that translation. That it could not be 
passed over unnoticed, we may gather from St. Hilary, who says, that 
before his conversion to Christianity, meeting with this appellation of 
God in the Pentateuch, he was struch with admiration, nothing being so 
proper to God as to be. Among the Jews, however, the import of this 
stupendous name was preserved unimpaired by metaphysical specula- 
tions. It was registered in their sacred“books: from the fulness of its 
meaning the loftiest thoughts are seen to spring up in the minds of the 
prophets, which amplify with an awful and mysterious grandeur their 
descriptions of his peculiar glories, in contrast with the vain gods of the 
heathen, and with every actual existence, however exalted, in heaven 
and in earth. 

On this subject of the eternal duration of the Divine Being, many 
have held a metaphysical refinement. ‘The eternal existence of God,” 
it is said, “is not to be considered as successive; the ideas we gain 
from tzme are not to be allowed in our conceptions of his duration. As 
he fills all space with his immensity, he fills all duration with his eter- 
nity ; and with him eternity is nunc stans, a permanent now, incapable 
of the relations of past, present, and future.” Such, certainly, is not 
the view given us of this mysterious subject in the Scriptures; and if it 
should be said that they speak popularly, and are accommodated to the 
infirmity of the thoughts of the body of mankind, we may reply, that 
philosophy has not, with all its boasting of superior light, carried our 
views on this attribute of the Divine nature at all beyond the revelation ; 
and, in attempting it, has only obscured the conceptions of its disciples. 
“Filling duration with his eternity” is a phrase without any meaning : 
“For how can any man conceive a permanent instant, which co-exists 
with a perpetually flowing duration? One might as well apprehend a 
mathematical point co-extended with a line, a surface, and all dimen. 
sions.” (Abernethy’s Sermons.) As this notion has, however, been 
made the basis of some opinions, which will be remarked upon in their 
proper place, it may be proper briefly to examine it. 

Whether we get our idea of time from the motion of bodies without 
us, or from the consciousness of the succession of our own ideas, ot 
both, is not important to this inquiry. Time, in our conceptions, is 
divisible. The artificial divisions are years, months, days, minutes, 
seconds, &c. We can conceive of yet smaller portions of duration, 
and whether we have given to them a tificial names or not, we can 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 352 


conceive no otherwise of duration, than continuance of being, estimated 
as to degree, by this artificial admeasurement, and therefore as substan. 
ually answering to it. It is not denied but that duration is something 
distinct from these its artificial measures ; yet of this every man’s con- 
sciousness will assure him, that we can form no idea of duration except 
in this successive manner. But we are told, that the eternity of God is 
a fixed eternal now, from which all ideas of succession, of past and fu- 
ture, are to be excluded ; and we are called upon to conceive of eternal 
duration without reference to past or future, and to the exclusion of the 
‘dea of that flow under which we conceive of time. The proper adstract 
idea of duration is, however, simple continuance of being, without any 
reference to the exact degree or extent of it, because in no other way 
can it be equally applicable to all the substances of which it is the attri- 
bute. It may be finite or infinite, momentary or eternal, but that de- 
pends upon the substance of which it is the quality, and not upon its 
own nature. Our own observation and experience teach us how to 
apply it to ourselves. As to us, duration is dependent and finite ; as 
to God, it is infinite; but in both cases the originality or dependence, 
the finity or infinity of it, arises not out of the nature of duration itself, 
but out of other qualities of the subjects respectively. 

Duration, then, as applied to God, is no more than an extension of the 
idea as applied to ourselves; and to exhort us to conceive of it as 
something essentially different, is to require us to conceive what is in- 
conceivable. It is to demand of us to think without ideas. Duration 
is continuance of existence, continuance of existence is capable of being 
longer or shorter, and hence necessarily arises the idea of the succes. 
sion of the minutest points of duration into which we can conceive it 
divided. Beyond this the mind cannot go, it forms the idea of duration 
no other way ; and if what we call duration be any thing different from 
this in God, it is not duration, properly so called, according to human 
ideas; it is something else, for which there is no name among men, be- 
cause there is no idea, and therefore it is impossible to reason about it. 
As long as metaphysicians use the term, they must take the idea: if 
they spurn the idea, they have no right to the term, and ought at once 
to confess that they can go no farther. Dr. Cudworth defines infinity 
of duration to be nothing else but perfection, as including in it necessary 
existence and immutability. This, it is true, is as much a definition of 
the moon, as of infinity of duration; bnt it is valuable, as it shows 
that, in the view of this great man, though an advocate of the nune 
slans, the standing now of eternity, we must abandon the term duration, 
if we give up the only idea under which it can be conceived. 

It follows from this, therefore, that either we must apply the term 
duration to the Divine Being in the same sense in which we apply it to 
creatures, with the extension of the icea ta a duration which has no 


358 THEOLOGILAL INSTITUTES. [PAKT 


bounds and limits, or blot it out of our creeas, as a word to which our 
minds, with all the aid they may derive from the labours of metaphysi- 
cians, can attach no meaning. The only notion which has the appear- 
ance of an objection to this successive duration, as applied to him, 
appears wholly to arise from confounding two very distinct things; suc- 
cession in the duration, and change in the substance. Dr.-Cudworth 
appears to have fallen into this error. He speaks of the duration of an 
imperfect nature, as sliding from the present to the future, expecting 
something of itself which is not yet in being, and of a perfect nature 
being essentially immutable, having a permanent and unchanging dura- 
tion, never losing any thing of itself once present, nor yet running 
forward to meet something of itself which is not yet in being. Now, 
though this is a good description of a perfect and immutable nature, it 
is no description at all of an eternally-enduring nature. Duration im- 
plies no loss in the substance of any being, nor addition to it. A perfect 
nature never loses any thing of itself, nor expects more of itself than is 
possessed ; but this does not arise from the attribute of its duration, 
however that attribute may be conceived of, but from its perfection, and 
consequent immutability. These attributes do not flow from the dura- 
tion, but the extent of the duration from them. The argument is clearly 
good for nothing, unless it could be proved, that successive duration 
necessarily implies change in the nature; but that is contradicted by 
the experience of finite beings—their natures are not at all determined 
by their duration, but their duration by their natures; and they exist for 
a moment, or for ages, according to the nature which their Maker has 
impressed upon them. If it be said that, at least, successive duration 
imports that a being loses past duration, and expects the arrival of future 
existence, we reply, that this is no imperfection at all. , Even finite 
creatures do not feel it to be an imperfection to have existed, and to louk 
for continued and interminable being. It is true, with the past, we lose 
knowledge and pleasure ; and expecting in all future periods increase 
of knowledge and happiness, we are reminded by that of our present 
imperfection ; but this imperfection does not arise from our successive 
and flowing duration, and we never refer it to that. It is not the past 
which takes away our knowledge and pleasure; nor future duration, 
simply considered, which will confer the increase of both. Our imper. 
foc ions arise out of the essential nature of our being, not out of the 
manner in which our being is continued. It is not the flow of our 
duration, but the flow of our natures which produces these effects, On 
the contrary, we think that the idea of our successive duration, that is, 
of continuance, is an excellency, and not a defect. Let all ideas of 
continuance be banished from the mind, let these be to us a nunc semper 
stans, during the whole of our being, and we appear to gain nothing— 
our pleasures surely are not diminished by the idea of long continuance 


SECOND. } THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 339 


seing added to present enjoyment; that they have been, anc still re- 
waain, and will continue, on the contrary, greatly heightens them. With. 
out the idea of a flowing duration, we could have no such measure of 
the continuance of our pleasures, and this we should consider an abate. 
ment. of our happiness. What is so obvious an excellency in the spirit 
“Mt man, and in angelic natures, can never be thought an imperfection in 
God, when joined with a nature essentially perfect and immutable. 


But it may be said, that eternal duration, considered as successive, 18 


only an artificial manner of measuring, and conceiving of duration ; 
and 1s n0 more eternal duration itself than minutes and moments, the 
artificial measures of time, are time itself. Were this granted, the 
question would still be, whether there is any thing in duration, consi 

dered generally, or in time considered specially, which corresponds to 
these artificial methods of measuring, and conceiving of them. ‘The 
ocean is measured by leagues; but the extension of the ocean, and the 
measure of it, are distinct. They, nevertheless, answer to each other 

Leagues are the nominal divisions of an extended surface, but there is a 
real extension, which answers to the artificial conception and admea- 
surement of it. In like manner, days, and hours, and moments, are the 
measures of time; but there is either something in time which answers 
to these measures, or not only the measure, but the thing itself is arti- 
ficial—an imaginary creation. If any man will contend, that the period 
of duration which we call time, is nothing, no farther dispute can be 
held with him, and he may be left to deny also the existence of matter, 
and to enjoy his philosophic revel in an ideal world. We apply the 
game argument to duration generally, whether finite or infinite. M1i- 
nutes and moments, or smaller portions, for which we have no name, 
may be artificial, adopted to aid our conceptions ; but conceptions of 
what? Not of any thing standing still, but of something going on. Of 
duration we have no other conception ; and if there be nothing in nature 
which answers to this conception, then is duration itself imaginary, and 
we discourse about nothing. If the duration of the Divine Being admits 
not of past, present, and future, one of these two consequences must 
fo.low,—that no such attribute as that of eternity belongs to him,—or 
that there is no power in the human mind to conceive of it. In either 
case the Scriptures are greatly impugned ; for “ He who was, and 1s, 
and is to come,” is a revelation of the eternity of God, which is then in 
no sense true. It is not true if used literally ; and it is as little so if 
the language be figurative, for the figure rests cn no basis, it illustrates 
nothing, it misleads. 

God is omnivorEeNT: Of this attribute also we have the most ample 
revelation, and in the most impressive and sublime language. From 
the annunciation in the Scriptures of a Divine existence who was “ in the 
peginning” before all things, the verv first stev is the display of his al. 


\ 


360 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PRT 


miglity power in the creation out of nothing, and the immediate arrange- 
ment in order and perfection, of the “heaven and the earth ;” by which 
is meant not this globe only with its atmosphere, or even with its own 
celestial system, but the universe itself; for “he made the stars also.” 
We are thus placed at once in the presence of an agent of unbounded 
power, “the strict and correct conclusion being, that a power which 
could create such a world as this, must be beyond all comparison, 
greater than any which we experience in ourselves, than any which 
we observe in other visible agents, greater also than any which we can 
want for our individual protection and preservation, in the Being upon 
whom we depend; a power likewise to which we are not authorized by 
our observation or knowledge to assign any limits of space or duration.” 
(Paley.) 

That the sacred writers should so frequently dwell upon the omnipo- 
tence of God, has an important reason which arises out of the very 
design of that revelation which they were the instruments vf communi- 
cating to mankind. Men were to be reminded of their obligations to 
obedience, and God is therefore constantly exhibited as the Creator, the 
Preserver, and Lord of ali things. His reverent worship and fear was 
to be enjoined upon them, and by the manifestation of his works the veil 
was withdrawn from his glory and majesty. Idolatry was to be checked 
and reproved, and the true God was thus. placed in contrast with the 
limited and powerless gods of the heathen. “ Among the gods of the 
nations, is there no god like unto thee, neither are there any works like 
thy works.” Finally, he was to be exhibited as the object of trust to 
creatures, constantly reminded by experience of their own infirmity and 
dependence, and to whom it was essential to know, that his power was 
absolute, unlimited, and irresistible. 

In the revelation which was thus designed to awe and control the 
bad, and to afford strength of mind and consolation to the good under 
all circumstances, the omnipotence of God is therefore placed in a great 
variety of impressive views, and connected with the most striking 
illustrations. 

It is presented by the fact of creation, the creation of beings out of 
nothing, which itself, though it had been confined to a single object, 
however minute, exceeds finite comprehension, and overwhelms the 
faculties. ‘This with God required no effort— He spake and it was 
done, he commanded and it stood fast.” The vastness and variety of 
his works enlarge the conception. ‘* The heavens declare the glory of 
God, and the firmament showeth his handy work.” ‘He spreadeth 
out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea; he maketh 
Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the south ; he doeth 
great things, past finding out, yea, and wonders without number. He 
stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth 


SECOND. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 361 


upon nothing. He bindeth up the waters in the thick clouds, and the 
eloud is not rent under them; he hath compassed the waters with 
bounds until the day and night come to an end.” The ease with which 
he sustains, orders, and controls the most powerful and unruly of the 
elements, presents his omnipotence under an aspect of ineffable dignity 
and majesty. ‘By him all things consist.””. He brake up for the sea 
“a decreed place, and set bars and doors, and said, Hitherto shalt thou 
come and no farther, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.” “ He 
looketh to the end of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven, to 
make the weight for the winds, to weigh the waters by measure, to 
make a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder.” 
*“ Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, meted out 
heaven with a span, comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, 
and weighed the mountains in scales, and the winds in a balance ?” 
The descriptions of the Divine power are often terrible. “The pillars 
of heaven tremble, and are astonished at his reproof; he divideth the 
sea by his power.” “ He removeth the mountains, and they know it 
not; he overturneth them in his anger, he shaketh the earth out of her 
place, and the pillars thereof tremble; he commandeth the sun and it 
riseth not, and sealeth up the stars.” The same absoJute subjection of 
creatures to his dominion is seen among the intelligent inhabitants of the 
material universe, and angels, men the most exalted, and evil spirits, 
are swayed with as much ease as the least resistless elements. “ He 
maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.” They veil 
their faces before his throne, and acknowledge themselves his servants. 
“Tt is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants 
thereof are as grasshoppers,” “as the dust of the balance, less than 
nothing and vanity.” <‘‘ He bringeth princes to nothing.” “ He setteth 
up one and putteth down azother,” “for the kingdom is the Lord’s, and 
he is governor among the nations.” “The angels that sinned, he cast 
down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved 
unto judgment.” The closing scenes of this world complete these 
transcendent conceptions of the majesty and power of God. The dead 
of all ages shall rise from their graves at his voice ; and the sea shall 
give up the dead which are in it. Before his face heaven and earth 
fee away, the stars fall from heaven, and the powers of heaven are 
shaken. The dead, small and great, stand before God, and are divided 
as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats; the wicked go away 
into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal. 

Of these amazing views of the omnipotence of God, spread almost 
through every page of the Scripture, the power lies in their fruth, They 
are not eastern exaggerations, mistaken for sublimity. Every thing in 
nature answers to them, and renews from age to age the energy of the 
mpression which they cannot but make upon the reflecting mind. The 


362 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PARI 


order of the astral revolutions indicates the constant presence of an invi- 
sible but incomprehensible power :—the seas hurl the weight of their 
billows upon the rising shores, but every where find a “ bound fixed by 
a perpetual decree ;’—ihe tides reach their height ; if they flowed on 
for a few hours, the earth would change places with the bed of the sea; 
but under an invisible control they become refluent. “ Hie toucheth the 
mountains and they smoke,” is not mere imagery. Every volcano is a 
testimony of that truth to nature which we find in the Scriptures ; and 
earthquakes teach, that before him, ‘the pillars of the world tremble.” 
Men collected into armies, and populous nations, give us vast ideas of 
human power: but let an army be placed amidst the sand storms and 
burning winds of the desert, as, in the east, has frequently happened 
or before “ his frost,” 
mightiest armaments was seen retreating before, or perishing undei ar 


. a . . 
as in our own day, in Russia, where one of the 


unexpected visitation of snow and storm; or let the utterly helpless 
state of a populous country which has been visited by famine, or by a 
resistless pestilential disease, be reflected upon, and it is no figure 
of speech to say, that “all nations are before him less than nothing 
and vanity.” 

Nor in reviewing this doctrine of Scripture, ought the fine practical 
uses made of the omnipotence of God, by the sacred writers, to be 
overlooked. In them there is nothing said for the display of knowledge, 
as, too often, in heathen writers ; no speculation’ without a moral sub- 
servient to it, and that by evident design. ‘To excite and keep alive in 
man the fear and worship of God, and to bring him to a felicitous confi- 
dence in that almighty power which pervades and controls all things, 
we have observed, are the reasons for those ample displays of the omni- 
potence of God, which roll through the sacred volume with a sublimity 
that inspiration only could supply. “Declare his glory among the 
heathen, his marvellous works among all nations ; for great is the Lord 
and greatly to be praised. Glory and honour are in his presence, and 
strength and gladness in his place. Give unto the Lord, ye kindreds 
of the people, give unto the Lord glory and strength ; give unto the 
Lord the glory due unto his name. The Lord is my light and my sal. 
vation ; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of 
whom shall I be afraid? If God be for us, who then can be against us? 
Our help standeth in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and 
earth. What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.” Thus, as one 
observes, ‘our natural fears, of which we must have many, remit us to 
‘sod, and remind us, since we know what God is, to lay hold on his 
almighty power.” 

Ample however as are the views afforded us in Scripture of the 
power of God, we are not to consider the subject as bounded by them. 
As when the Scriptures declare the eternity of God, they declare it so 


SECOND. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, 363 


as to unveil to us something of that fearful peculiarity of the Divine 
nature, that he is the fountain of being to himself, and that he is eternal, 
necause he is the “I am ;” so we are taught not to measure his omnipo- 
tence by the actual displays of it which have been made. ‘They are the 
manifestations of the principle, but not the measure of its capacity ; 
and should we resort to the discoveries of modern philosophy, wnich, by 
the help of instruments, has so greatly enlarged the known boundaries 
nf the visible universe, and add to the stars, visible to the naked eye, 
new exhibitions of the Divine power in those nebulous appearances of 
the heavens which are resolvable into myriads of distinct celestial lumi- 
naries, whose immense distances commingle their light before it reaches 
our eyes; we thus almost infinitely expand the circle of created exist- 
ence, and enter upon a formerly unknown and overwhelming range of 
Divine operation ; but we are still reminded, that his power is truly 
almighty and measureless—*“ Lo, all these are parts of his ways, but 
how little a portion is known of him, and the thunder of his power who 
can understand?” It is a mighty conception to think of a power from 
which all other power is derived, and to which it is subordinate ; which 
nothing can oppose; which can beat down and annihilate all other 
powers whatever ; a power which operates in the most perfect manner ; 
at once, in an instant, with the utmost ease: but the Scriptures lead us 
to the contemplation of greater deptiis, and those unfathomable.- The 
omnipotence of God is inconceivable and boundless. It arises from the 
infinite perfection of God, that his power can never be actually exhausted ; 
and in every imaginable instant in eternity, that inexhaustible power of 
God can, if it please him, be adding either more creatures to those 
in existence, or greater perfection to them ; since “ it belongs to self- 
existent being, to be always full and communicative, and to the com- 
municated, contingent being, to be ever empty and craving.” (Howe.) 

One limitation only we can conceive, which however detracts nothing 
from this perfection of the Divine nature. 

“ Where things in themselves imply a contradiction, as that a body 
may be extended and not extended, in a place and not in a place, at 
the same time; such things, I say, cannot be done by God, because 
contradictions are impossible in their own nature: nor is it any deroga.. 
tion from the Divine power to say, they cannot be done ; for as the 
object of the understanding, of the eye, and the ear, is that which is 
intelligible, visible, and audible; so the object of power must be that 
which is possible ; and as it is no prejudice to the most perfect under. 
standing, or sight, or hearing, that it does not understand what is not 
intelligible, or see what is not visible, or hear what is not audible; so 
neither is it any diminution to the most perfect power, that it does not. 
do what is not possible. (Bishop Wilkins.) In like manner, God cannot 
do any thing that is repugnant to his other perfections: he cannot lie, 


364 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


nor deceive, nor deny himself; for this would be injurious to his truth. — 
He cannot love sin, nor punish innocence; for this would destroy his 
holiness and goodness: and therefore to ascribe a power to him that is 
inconsistent with the rectitude of his nature, is not to magnify, but 
debase him; for all unrighteousness is weakness, a defection from right 
reason, a deviation from the perfect rule of action, and arises from a 
defect of goodness and power. In a word, since all the attributes of 
God are essentially the same, a power in him which tends to destroy 
any other attribute of the Divine nature, must be a power destructive of 
itself. Well therefore may we conclude him absolutely omnipotent, 
who, by being able to effect all things consistent with his perfections, 
showeth infinite ability, and by not being able to do any thing repug- 
nant to the same perfections, demonstrates himself subject to no infir. 
mity.” (Pearson on the Creed.) 

Nothing certainly in the finest writings of antiquity, were all their 
best thoughts collected as to the majesty and power of God, can bear 
any comparison to the views thus presented to us by Divine revelation. 
Were we to forget for a moment, what is the fact, that their noblest 
notions stand connected with fancies and vain speculations which deprive 
them of their force, their thought never rises so high, the current of it 
is broken, the round of lofty conception is not completed ; and, uncon 
nected as their views of Divine power were with the eternal destiny of 
man, and the very reason of creation, we never hear in them, as in the 
Scriptures, “the rHunper of his power.” One of the best specimens 
of heathen devotion is given below in the hymn of Cleanthes the Stoic ; 
and, though noble and just, it sinks infinitely in the comparison. 

“ Hail, O Jupiter, most glorious of the immortals, invoked under 
many names, always most powerful, the first ruler of nature, whose law 
governs all things,—hail! for to address thee is permitted to all mor- 
tals.—For our race we have from thee; we mortals who creep upon 
the ground, receiving only the echo of thy voice. I therefore, I will 
celebrate thce, and will always sing thy power. All this universe rolling 
round the earth, obeys thee wherever thou guidest, and willingly is 
governed by thee. So vehement, so fiery, so immortal is the thunder 
which thou holdest subservient in thy unshaken hands ; for, by the stroke 
of this, all nature was rooted; by this, thou directest the common rea. 
son which pervades all things, mixed with the greater and lesser lumi. 
rarles; so great a king art thou, supreme through all; nor does any 
work take place without thee on the earth, nor in the ethereal sky, nor 
in the sea. except what the bad perform in their own folly. But do 
thou, O Jupiter, giver of all blessings, dwelling in the clouds, ruler of 
the thunder, defend mortals from dismal misfortune ; which dispel, O 
Father, from the soul, and grant it to attain that judgment, trusting to 
‘vhich thou governest all things with justice; that, being honoured, we 





SECOND. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, — 365 


inay repay thee with honour, singing continually thy works, as becomes 
« mortal; since there is no greater meed to men or gods, than always 
to celebrate justly the universal law.” 

The Omnrpresence or Unrquiry of God, is another doctrine of Scrip- 
ture ; and it is corroborated by facts obvious to all reflecting beings, 
though to us, and perhaps to all finite minds, the mode is incomprehensi- 
ble. The statement of this doctrine in the inspired records, like that 
of all the other attributes of God, is made in their own peculiar tone 
and emphasjs of majesty and sublimity. “ Whither shall I go from thy 
Spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up to 
heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art 
there; if I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost 
parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead -ne, and thy right hand 
shall hold me.—Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall] not 
see hin? Do not I fill heaven and earth, saith the Lord? AmIla 
God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off?!—Thus saith the 
Lord, behold heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.—Be- 
hold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee.—Though 
he dig into hell, thence shall my hand take him; though he climb up 
into heaven, thence will I bring him down; and though he hide himself 
in the top of Carmel, I will search and take him out from thence.—In 
him we live, and move, and have our being.—He filieth all things.” 

Some striking passages on the ubiquity of the Divine presence may 
be found in the writings of some of the Greek philosophers, arising out 
of this notion, that God was the soul of the world; but their very con. 
nection with this speculation, notwithstanding the imposing phrase occa- 
sionally adopted, strikingly marks the difference between their most 
exalted views, and those of the Hebrew prophets on this subject. * To 
a large proportion of those who hold a distinguished rank among the 
ancient Thezstical philosophers, the idea of the personality of the Deity 
was in a great measure unknown. ‘The Deity by them was considered, 
not so much an intelligent being as an animating power, diffused through- 
out the world, and was introduced into their speculative system to ac- 
count for the motion of that passive mass of matter, which was supposed 
coeval, and indeed coexistent with himself.” (Swmner’s Records of the 
Creation.) These defective notions are confessed by Gibbon, a writer 
not disposed to undervalue their attainments. 

“The philosophers of Greece deduced their morals from the nature 
of man, rather than from that of God. They meditated, however 
on the Divine nature, as a very curious and important speculation ; and 
in the profound inquiry, they displayed the strength and weakness of 
the human understanding. Of the four most considerable sects, the 
Stoics and the Platonicians endeavoured to reconcile the jarring interests ~ 
of reason and piety. They have lett us the most sublime proofs of the 


2RG THEOLOGICAL INSTITUIFS. - [PART 


existence and perfections of the First Cause; but as it was impossible 
jor them to conceive the creation of matter, the workman, in the Stoic 
philosophy, was not sufficiently distinguished from the work ; while on 
the contrary, the spiritual God of Plato and his disciples resembled more 
an idea than a substance.” (Decline and Fall, &c.) 

Similar errors have been revived in the infidel philosophy of modern 
time, from Spinoza down to the latter offspring of the German and 
French schools. ‘The same remark applies also to the oriental philo- 
sophy, which, as before remarked, presents at this day a perfect view 
of the boasted wisdom of ancient Greece, which was “brought to nought” 
by “the foolishness” of apostolic preaching. But in the Scriptures there 
is nothing confused in the doctrine of the Divine ubiquity. God is 
every where, but he is not every thing.* All things have their being in 
him, but he is distinct from all things; he fills the universe, but is 
not mingled with it. He is the intelligence which guides, and the power 
which sustains, but his personality is preserved, and he is independent 
of the works of his hands, however vast and noble. So far is his pre- 
sence from being bounded by the universe itself, that, as in the passage 
above quoted from the Psalms, we are taught that were it possible for us 
to wing our way into the immeasurable depths and breadths of space, God 
would there surround us, in as absolute a sense as that in which he is 
said to be about our bed and cur path in that part of the world where his 
will has placed us. 

On this as on all similar subjects, the Scriptures use terms which are 
taken in their common sense acceptation among mankind; and though 
the vanity ef the human mind disposes many to seek a philosophy in 
the doctrine thus announced deeper than that which its popular terms 
convey, we are bound to conclude, if we would pay but a common re- 
spect to an admitted revelation, that where no manifest figure of speech 
occurs, the truth of the doctrine lies in the tenor of the terms by which 
it is expressed. Otherwise there would be no revelation, I do not say, 
of the modus, for that is confessedly incomprehensible ; but of the fact. 
In the case before us, the terms presence, and place, are used according 
to common notions, and must be so taken, if the Scriptures are intelligi- 
ble. Metaphysical refinements are not Scriptural doctrines, when they 
give to the terms chosen by the Holy Spirit an acceptation out of their 
general and proper use, and make them the signs of a perfectly distinct 
class of ideas ; if indeed all distinctness of idea is not lost in the attempt. 
It is therefore in the popular, and just because Scriptural, manner, that 
we are to conceive of the omnipresence ot God. 

“If we reflect upon ourselves we may observe that we fill but a small 
space, and that our knowledge or power reaches but a little way. We 
can act at one time in one place only, and the sphere of our influence 
is narrow at largest. Would we be witnesses to what is done at any 


BECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 367 


distance from us, or exert there our active powers, we must remove 
ourselves thither. For this reason we are necessarily ignorant of a 
thousand things which pass around or, incapable of attending and 
managing any great variety of affairs, or performing at the same time 
any number of actions, for our owu yood, or for the benefit of others. 

* Although we feel this to be the present condition of our being, and 
the limited state of our intelligent and active powers, yet we can easily 
conceive, there may exist beings more perfect, and whose presence may 
extend {2r and wide. Any one of whom present in, what to us are, 
various places, at the same time, may know at once what is done in all 
these, and act in al] of them; and thus be able to regard and direct a 
variety of aifairs at the same instant. And who farther being qualified, 
by the purity and activity of their nature, to pass from one place to an- 
other with great ease and swifiness, may thus fill a large sphere of 
action, direct a great variety of affairs, confer a great number of bene- 
fits, and observe a multitude of actions at the same time, or in so swift 
a succession, as to us would appear but one instant. Thus perfect we 
may easily believe the angels of God. 

“We can farther conceive this extent of presence, and of ability for 
knowledge and action, to admit of degrees of ascending perfection ap- 
proaching to infinite. And when we have thus raised our thoughts to 
the idea of a being, who is not only present throughout a large empire, 
but throughout our world ; and not only in every part of our world, but 
in every part of all the numberless suns and worlds which rol! in the 
starry heavens—who is not only able to enliven and actuate the plants, 
animals, and men who live upon this globe, but countless varieties of 
creatures every where in an immense universe—yea, whose presence is 
not confined to the universe, immeasurable as that is by any finite mind, 
but who is present every where in infinite space ; and who is therefore 
able to create still new worlds and fill them with proper inhabitants, 
attend, supply, and govern them all—when we have thus gradually raised 
and enlarged our conceptions, we have the best idea we can form, of 
the universal presence of the great Jehovah, who filleth heaven and 
earth. There is no part of the universe, no portion of space uninhabit- 
ed by God, none wherein this Being of perfect power, wisdom, and be- 
nevolence is not essentially present. Could we with the swiftness ofa 
sunbeain dart ourselves beyond the limits of the creation, and for ages 
continue our progress in infinite space, we should still be surrounded 
with the Divine presence ; nor ever be able to reach that space wher 
God 1s not. 

«His presence also penetrates every part of our world; the most 
solid parts of the earth cannot exclude it; for it pierces as easily the 
centre of the globe, as the empty air. All creatures live and move, 
and have their being in him. And the inmost recesses of the human 


368 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. . -. [PART 


heart car. uv more exclude his presence, or conceal a thought from his 
knowledge, than the deepest caverns of the earth.” (Amory’s Sermons. ) 

‘The illustrations and confirmatory proofs of this doctrine which the 
material world furnishes, are numerous and striking. 

“Jt is a most evident and acknowledged truth that a being cannot act 
where it is not; if therefore aciivas and effects, which manifest the 
highest wisdom, power, and goodness in the author of them, are cont. 
nually produced every where, the author of these actions, or God, must 
be continually present with us, and wherever he thus acts. The matter 
which composes the world is evidently lifeless and thoughtless ; it must 
therefore be incapable of moving itself, or designing or producing any 
effects which require wisdom or power, The matter of our world, or 
the small parts which constitute the aur, the earth, and the waters, is 
yet continually moved, so as to produce effects of this kind; such are 
the innumerable herbs, and trees, and fruits which adorn the earth, and 
support the countless millions of creatures who inhabit it. There must 
therefore be constantly present, all over the earth, a most wise, mighty, 
and good being, the author and director of these motions. 

“We cannot, it is true, see him with our bodily eyes, because he is a 
pure Spirit; yet this is not any proof that he is not present. A judi- 
cious discourse, a series of kind actions, convince us of the presence of 
a friend, a person of prudence and benevolence. We cannot see the 
present mind, the seat and principle of these qualities ; yet the constant 
regular motion of the tongue, the hand, and the whole body, (which are 
the instruments of our souis, as the material universe and all the various 
bodies in it are the instruments of the Deity,) will not suffer us to doubt, 
that there is an intelligent and benevolent principle within the body, 
which produces all these skilful motions and kind actions. The sun, 
the air, the earth, and the waters, are no more able to move themselves, 
and produce all that beautiful and useful variety of plants, and fruits, 
and trees, with which our earth is covered, than the body of a man, 
when the soul hath left it, is able to move itself, form an instrument, 
plough a field, or build a house. If the laying out judiciously and well 
cultivating a small estate, sowing it with proper grain at the best time 
of the year, watering it in due season and quantities, and gathering in 
che fruits when ripe, and laying them up in the best manner—if all 
these effe ts prove the estate to have a manager, and the manager pos. 
sessed of skill and strength—certainly the enlightening and wamning 
the whole earth by the sun, and so directing its motion and the motion 
of the earth as to produce in a constant useful succession day and night, 
summer and winter, seed time and harvest; the watering the earth 
continually by the clouds, and thus bringing forth immense quantities 
of herbage, grain, and fruits—certainly all these effects continually pro- 
cuced, must prove that a being of the greatest power, wisdom, and 


SECOND. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 369 


benevolence, is continually present throughout our world, which he thus 
supports, moves, actuates, and makes fruitful. 

“The fire which warms us, knows nothing of its serviceableness to 
this purpose, nor of the wise laws according to which its particles are 
moved to produce this effect. And that it is placed in such a part of the 
house, where it may be greatly beneficial, and no way hurtful, is 
ascribed without hesitation to the contrivance and labour of a person 
who knew its proper place and uses. And if we came daily into a 
house wherein we saw this was regularly done, though we never saw 
an inhabitant therein, we could not doubt that the house was occupied 
by a rational inhabitant. That huge globe of fire in the heavens, 
which we call the sun, and on the light and influences of which the 
fertility of our world, and the life and pleasure of all animals depend, 
knows nothing of its serviceableness to these purposes, nor of the wise 
laws according to which its beams are dispensed; nor what place or 
motions were requisite for these beneficial purposes. Yet its beams 
are darted constantly in infinite numbers, every one according to those 
well-chosen laws, and its proper place and motion are maintained. 
Must not then its place be appointed, its motion regulated, and beams 
darted, by. almighty wisdom and goodness; which prevent the sun’s 
ever wandering in the boundless spaces of the heavens, so as to leave 
us in disconsolate cold and darkness; or coming so near, or emitting 
his rays in such a manner as to burn us up? Must not the great Being 
who enlightens and warms us by the sun, his instrument, who raises and 
sends down the vapours, brings forth and ripens the grain and fruits, and 
who is thus ever acting around us for our benefit, be always present in 
the sun, throughout the air, and all over the earth, which he thus moves 
and actuates ? 

‘‘ This earth is in itself a dead motionless mass, and void of all coun. 
sel; yet proper parts of it are continually raised through the small 
pipes which compose the bodies of plants and trees, and are made to 
contribute to their growth, to open and shine in blossoms and leaves, 
and to swell and harden into fruit. Could blind thoughtless particles 
thus continually keep on their way, through numberless winamngs, with- 
out once blundering, if they were not guided by an uncrring hand? 
Can the most perfect human skill from earth and water form one grain, 
much more a variety of beautiful and relishing fruits? Must not the 
directing mind, who does all this constantly, be most wise, mighty, and 
benevolent? Must not the Being who thus continually exerts his skill 
and energy around us, for our benefit, be confessed to be always present 
and concerned for our welfare 4 

“Can these effects be ascribed to any thing below an all-wise and_ 
umighty Cause? And must not this cause be present, wherever he acts ? 


Were God to speak to us every month from heaven, and with a voice 
Vor. I. 24 


370 THEOLOGICAL 1NS'TLTUTES, |PART 


loud as thunder declare, that he observes, provides for, and governs us, 
this would not be a proof in the judgment of sound reason by many 
degrees so valid. Since much less wisdom and power are required te 
form such sounds in the air, than to produce these effects; and to give 
not merely verbal declarations, but substantial evidences of his presence 
and care over us.” (Amory’s Sermons.) 

«In every part and place of the universe, with which we are 
acquainted, we perceive the exertion of a power, which we believe 
mediately or immediately, to proceed from the Deity. For instance: 
In what part or point of space, that has ever been explored, do we not 
discover attraction? In what regions do we not find light? In what 
accessible portion of our globe do we not meet with gravity, magnetism, 
electricity ; together with the properties, also and powers of organized 
substances, of vegetable or of animated nature? Nay, farther, we may 
ask, What kinzdom is there of nature, what corner of space, in which 
there is any thing that can be examined by us, where we do not fall 
upon contrivance and design? ‘The only reflection perhaps which 
arises in our minds from this view of the world around us is, that the 
laws of nature every where prevail; that they are uniform and uni- 
versul. But what do we mean by the laws of nature, or by any law? 
Effects are produced by power, not by laws. A law cannot execute 
itself. A law refers us to an agent.” (Paley.) 

The usual argument @ prior?, on this attribute of the Divine nature, 
has been stated as follows: but amidst so much demonstration of a much 
higher kind, it cannot be of much value. 

“The First Cause, the supreme all-perfect mind, as he could not 
derive his being from any other cause, must be independent of all other, 
and therefore unlimited. He exists by an absolute necessity of nature ; 
and as all the parts of infinite space are exactly uniform and alike, for 
the same reason that he exists in any one part, he must exist in all. No 
reason can be assigned for excluding him from one part, which would 
not exclude him from all. But that he is present in some parts of space, 
the evident effects of his wisdom, power, and benevolence continually 
produced, demonstrate, beyond all rational doubt. He must therefore 
be alike present every where; and fill infinite space with his infinite 
being.” (Amory. ) 

Among metaphysicians, it has been matter of dispute, whether God is 
present every where by an infinite extension of his essence. This is 
the opinion of Newton, Dr. S. Clarke, and their followers ; others have 
objected to this notion, that it might then be said, God is neither in heaven 
or in earth, but only a part of God in each. he former opinion, how- 
ever, appears most in harmony with the Scriptures ; though the term 
extension, through the inadequacy of language, conveys too material an 
idea. The objection just stated is wholly grounded on notions taken from 


SECOND. J THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 37] 


material ot ,ects, and is therefore of little weight, because it is not appli- 
cable to au immaterial substance. It is best to confess with one who had 
thought deeply on the subject, “there is an incomprehensibleness in the 
manner of every thing about which no controversy can or ought to be 
concerned.” (8) That we cannot comprehend how God is fully, and 
completely, and undividedly present every where, need not surprise us, 
when we reflect that the manner in which our own minds are present 
with our bodies is as incomprehensible, as the manner in which the 
supreme mind is present with every thing in the universe. 


CHAPTER IV. 
ATTRIBUTES OF Gop.—Omniscience. 


THe omniscience of God is constantly connected in Scripture with 
his omnipresence, and forms a part of almost every description of that 
attribute ; for as God is a spirit, and therefore intelligent, if he is every 
where, if nothing can exclude him, not even the most solid bodies, nor 
‘he minds of intelligent beings, then are all things “ naked and opened to 
he eyes of him with whom we have to do.” ‘ Where he acts, he is, 
and where he is, he perceives.” He understands and considers things 
absolutely, and as they are in their own natures, powers, properties, differ. 
ences, together with all the circumstances belonging to them.” (Bishop 
Wirxrns’s Principles.) “ Known unto him are all his works from the 
beginning of the world,” rather aw ’aimvog from all eternity—known, 
before they were made, in their possible, and known, now they are 
made, in their actual existence. ‘ Lord, thou hast searched me and 
known me; thou knowest my down-sitting and mine up-rising; thou 
understandest my thought afar off. ‘Thou compassest my path and my 
lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a 
word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.—The 
darkness hideth not from thee ; but the night shineth as the day.—The 
ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he pondereth all his 
goings ; he searcheth their hearts, and understandeth every imagination 
of their thoughts.” Nor is this perfect knowledge to be confined to 
men, or angels; it reaches into the state of the dead, and penetrates the 
regions of the damned. ‘“ Hell, hades, is naked before him; and destruc- 
tion (the seats of destruction) hath no covering.” No limits at all are 
to be set to this perfection. “Great is the Lord, his understanding 1s 
INFINITE.” 

In Psalm xciv, the knowledge of God is argued from the communica. 


2 


(8) Jackson’s Existence and Unity, &c.—Vide also Watts’s Philosophical E 
says, and I.aw’s Inquiry into the Ideas of Space, &c. 


372 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. | ,PART 


tion of it to men. ‘‘ Understand, ye brutish among the people; und, ye 
tools, when will ye be wise? He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? 
He that formed the eye, shall he not see ? He that chastiseth the heathen 
shall not he correct? He that teacheth man knowledge, shall not he 
know ?” This argument is as easy as it Is conclusive, obliging all whe 
acknowledge a First Cause to admit his perfect intelligence, or to take 
refuge in Atheism itself. It fetches not the proof from a distance, but 
refers us to our bosoms for the constant demonstration that the Lord is 
a God of knowledge, and that by him actions are weighed. 

‘“We find in ourselves such qualities as thought and intelligence, 
power and freedom, &c, for which we have the evidence of conscious- 
ness as much as for our own existence. Indeed, it is only by our con- 
sciousness of these that our existence is known to ourselves. We know 
likewise that these are perfections, and that to have them is better than 
to be without them. We find also that they have not been in us from 
eternity. They must, therefore, have had a beginning and consequently 
some cause, for the very same reason that a being beginning to exist in 
time requires a cause. Now this cause, as it must be superior to its 
effect, must have those perfections in a superior degree ; and if it be the 
first cause, it must have them in an infinite or unlimited degree, since 
bounds or limitation, without a limiter, would .e an effect without a 
cause.” 

“If God gives wisdom to the wise, and knowledge to men of under. 
standing, if he communicates this perfection to his creatures, the infer- 
ence must be that he himself is possessed of it in a much more eminent 
degree than they, that his knowledge is deep and intimate, reaching to 
the very essence of things, theirs but slight and superficial ; his clear 
and distinct, theirs confused and dark ; his certain and infallible, theirs 
doubtful and liable to mistake ; his easy and permanent, theirs obtained 
with much pains, and soon lost again by the defects of memory or age ; 
his universal and extending to all objects, theirs short and narrow, 
reaching only to some few things, while that which is wanting cannot be 
numbered ; and therefore as the heavens are higher than the earth, so, 
as the prophet has told us, are his ways above their ways, and his 
thoughts above their thoughts.” (TvJlotson’s Sermons. ) 

But His understanding is infinite ; a doctrine which ‘the sacred wnters 
not only authoritatively announce, but confirm by referring to the wisdom 
displayed in his works. ‘The only difference between wisdom and know- 
ledge is, that the former always supposes action, and action directed to 
an end. But wherever there is wisdom, there must be knowledge ; and 
as the wisdom of God in the creation cunsists in the formation of things 
which, by themselves, or in combination with others, shall produce cer- 
tain effects, and that in a variety of operation which is to us boundless, 
the previous knowledge of the possible qualities ana effects inevitably 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 373 


supposes a knowledge which can have no limit. For as creation cut of 
nothing argues a power which is omnipotent, so the knowledge of the 
possibilities of things which are not, a knowledge which, from the effect, 
we are sure must exist in God, argues that such a Being must be om- 
niscient. For “all things being not only present to him, but also entirely 
depending upon him, and having received both their being itself, and all 
their powers and faculties from him, it is manifest that, as he knows all 
things that are, so he must likewise know all possibilities of things, that 
is, all effects that can be. For, being himself alone self existent, and 
having alone given to all things all the powers and faculties they are 
endued with, it is evident he must of necessity know perfectly what all 
and each of those powers and faculties, which are derived wholly froin 
himself, can possibly produce: and seeing, at one boundless view, all 
the possible compositions and divisions, variations and changes, circum- 
stances and dependencies of things; all their possible relations one to 
another, and their dispositions or fitnesses to certain and respective ends, 
he must, without possibility of error, know exactly what is best and 
properest in every one of the infinite possible cases or methods of dis- 
posing things: and understand perfectly how to order and direct the 
respecuve means, to bring about what he so knows to be, in its kind, or 
in the whole, the best and fittest in the end. This is what we mean by 
infinite wisdom.” 

On the subject of the Divine ubiquity and omniscience, many fine 
sentiments are found, even among pagans; for an intelligent First Cause 
being in any sense admitted, it was most natural and obvious to ascribe 
to him a perfect knowledge of all things. ‘They acknowledged “that 
nothing is hid from God, who is intimate to our minds, and mingles him. 
self with our very thoughts ;” (9) nor were they all unaware of the 
practical tendency of such a doctrine, and of the motive it affords to a 
cautious and virtuous conduct. (1) But among them it was not held, as 
by the sacred writers, in connection with other correct views of the Divine 
nature, which are essential to give to this its full moral effect. Not 
only on this subject does the manner in which the Scriptures state this 
doctrine far transcend that of the wisest pagan Theists; but the moral 
of the sentiment is infinitely more comprehensive and impressive. With 
them it is connected with man’s state of trial; with a holy law, all the 
violations of which, in thought, word, and deed, are both infallibly known, 
and strictly marked ; with promises of grace; and of mild and protect- 
ing government, as to all who have sought and found the mercy of God, 
forgiving their sins and admitting them into his family. The wicked are 


(9) Nihil Deo clansum, interest animis nostris, et medits cogitationibus inter. 
enit. Sen. Epist. ; 

(1) Quis enim non timeat Deum, omnia pervidentem, et cogitantem, &c 
Cic. De Nat. Deor. 


o74 THEOLOGICAL JNSTITUTES, PART 


thus reminded that their hearts are searched, and their sins noted ; that 
the eyes of the Lord are upon their ways; and that their most secret 
works will be brought to light in the day when God the witness, shall 
become God the Judge. In like manner, “ the eyes of the Lord are said 
to be over the righteous ;” that such persons are kept by him “ who 
never slumbers nor sleeps ;” that he is never “ far from them,” and that 
‘his eyes run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself 
strong in their behalf ;” that foes, to them invisible, are seen by his eye, 
and controlled by his arm; and that this great attribute, so appalling to 
wicked men, affords to them, not only the most influential reason for a 
perfectly holy temper and conduct, but the strongest motive to trust, and 
Joy, and hope, amidst the changes and _ afflictions of the present life. 
Socrates, as well as other philosophers, could express themselves well, 
so long as they expressed themselves generally, on this subject. The 
former could say, “ Let your own frame instruct you. Does the mind 
inhabiting your body dispose and govern it with ease? Ought you nof 
then to conclude, that the universal mind with equal ease actuates and 
governs universal nature ; and that, when you can at once consider the 
iterests of the Athenians at home, in Egypt, and in Sicily, it is not too 
much for the Divine wisdom to take care of the universe ? These reflec- 
tions will soon convince you that the greatness of the Divine mind is 
such, as at once to see all things, hear all things, be present every where, 
and direct all the affairs of the world.” ‘These views are just ; but they 
wanted that connection with others relative both to the Divine nature 
and government, which we see only in the Bible, to render them influ- 
ential; they neither gave correct moral distinctions nor led to a virtuous 
practice, no not in Socrates, who on some subjects, and especially on the 
personality of the Deity, and his independence on matter, raised himself 
far above the rest of his philosophic brethren, but in moral feeling and 
practice was as censurable as they. (2) 


(2) Several parallels have been at different times drawn, even by Christian 
divines, between the character of Socrates and Christ, doubtless with the inten- 
tion of exalting the latter, but yet so as to veil the true character of the former. 
Hiow great is the disgust one feels at that want of all moral delicacy from which 
only such comparisons could emanate, when the true character of Socrates 
comes to be unveiled! On a sermon preached at Cambridge by Dr. Butler, which 
t mtains one of these parallels, ‘the Christian Observer” has the following just 
tumarks :— 

** We earnestly request that such of our readers as are sufficiently acquainted with 
classical literature to institute the examination, would turn to the eleventh chap- 
ter of the third book of the Memorabilia of Xenophon, and we are persuaded that 
they will not think our reprehension of Dr. Butler misplaced The very title 
of the chapter, we should have thought, would have precluded any Christiar 
scholar, much more any Christian divine, from the possibility of being guilty of 
a profanation so gross and revolting. The title of it is Cum Meretrice Theodata 


f 


SECOND. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. yo 373 


The foreknowledge of God, or his prescience of future things, thuugh 
contingent, is by divines generally included in the term omniscience, and 
for this they have unquestionably the authority of the Holy Scriptures. 
From the difficulty which has been supposed to exist, in reconciling this 
with the freedom of human actions, and man’s accountability, some have. 
however refused to allow prescience, at least of contingent actions, to be 
a property of the Divine nature; and others have adopted various modi- 
fications of opinion, as to the knowledge of God, in order to elude, or to 
remove the objection. This subject was glanced at in part i, chap. 9, 
but in this place, where the omniscience of God is under consideration, 
the three leading theories, which have been resorted to for the purpose 
of maintaining unimpugned the moral government of God, and the free- 
dom and responsibility of man seem to require examination, that the 
true docirine of Scripture may be fully brought out and established. (3) 


de arte hominum alliciendorum disserit, (Socrates, viz.) Doubtless many who 
heard Dr. Butler preach, and many more who have since read his sermon, have 
taken it for granted, that when he ventured to recommend the conduct of Socra- 
tes, in associating with courtezans, as being an adumbration with that of our 
Saviour, he must have alluded to instances in the life of that philosopher of his 
having laboured to reclaim the vicious, or to console the penitent with the hope 
of pardon. For ourselves, we know of no such instances. But what will be his 
surprise to find that the intercourse of Socrates with courtezans, as it is here re. 
corded by Xenophon, was of the most licentious and profligate description ?” 

(3) There is another theory which was formerly much debated, under the 
name of Scientia Media; but to which, in the present day, reference is seldom 
made. The knowledge of God was distributed into Necessary, which goes before 
every act of the will in the order of nature, and by which he knows himself, and 
all possible things :—Free, which follows the act of the will, and by which God 
knows all things which he has decreed to do and to permit, as things which he 
wills to be done or permitted :—Middle, so called because partaking of the two 
former kinds, by which he knows, sub conditione, what men and angels would 
voluntarily do under any given circumstances. ‘‘ Tertiam Mediam, qua sub con- 
ditione novit quid homines aut angeli facturi essent pro sua libertate, si cum his 
aut illis circumstantiis, in hoc vel in illo rerum ordine constituerentur.”— Episco- 
vius De Scientia Dei. They illustrate this kind of knowledge by such passages 
as, ‘* Wo unto thee, Chorazin! wo unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works 
which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have re- 
pented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.” This distinction, which was taken 
trom the Jesuits, who drew it from the schooilmen, was at least favoured by some 
of the remonstrant divines, as the extract from Episcopius shows; and they seem 
to have been led to it by the circumstance that almost all the high Calvinist theo- 
{ogians of that day entirely denied the possibility of contingent future actions 
being foreknown, in order to support on this ground their doctrine of absolute 
predestination. In this, however, those remonstrants, who adopted that notion, 
did not follow their great leader Arminius, who felt no need of this subterfuge, 
but stood of the plain declarations of Scripture, unembarrassed with metaphysical 
distinctions. (Gomarus, on the other side, adopted this opinion, which was con+ 
fined, among the Calvinists of that day, to himseif and another. Gomarus betook 
himself to this notion of conditional prescience, in order to avoid being charged 


376 THECLOGICAL INSTITUTES, i) {PART 


The Chevalier Ramsay, among his-other speculations, holds “it a 
matter of choice in God, to think of finite ideas ;” and similar opinions, 
though variously worded, have been occasionally adopted. In substance 
these opinions are, that though the knowledge of God be infinite, as his 
power is infinite, there is no more reason to conclude that his knowledge 
should be always exerted to the full extent of its capacity, than that hic 
power should be employed to the extent of his omnipotence ; and that 
if we suppose him to choose not to know some contingencies, the infinite- 
ness of his knowledge is not thereby impugned. ‘To this it may he 
answered, “that the infinite power of God is in Scripture represented, 
as in the nature of things it must be, as an infinite capacity, and not as 
infinite in act; but that the knowledge of God is on the contrary never 
represented there to us as a capacity to acquire knowledge, but as 
actually comprehending all things that are, and all things that can be. 
2. That the notion of God’s choosing to know some things, and not to 
know others, supposes a reason why he refuses to know any class of 
things or events, which reason, it would seem, can only arise out of 
their nature and circumstances, and therefore supposes at least a partial 
knowledge of them, from which the reason for his not choosing to know 
them arises. The doctrine is therefore somewhat contradictory. But 
3, it is fatal to this opinion, that it does not at all meet the difficulty 
arising out of the question of the congruity of Divine prescience, and 
the free actions of man; since some contingent actions, for which men 
have been made accountable, we are sure have been foreknown by God, 


with making God the author of the sin of Adam, and found it a convenient mode 
of eluding so formidable an objection, as Curcelleus remarks: ‘‘Sapienter ergo, 
meo judicio, Gomarus, cum suam de reprobationis objecto sententiam hoc ab- 
surdo videret urgeri, quod Deum peccati Adami auctorem constituerit, ad presci- 
entiam conditionatam confugit, gua Deus ex infinito scientie sue lumine, quedam 
futura non absolute, sed certa conditione posita prenovit. Hac enim ratione 
commodissime ictum istum declinavit.—Eumque postea secutus est Walleus in 
Locis suis Communibus; qui etiam feliciter scopulum illum pretervehitur.— 
Nullum preterea ex Calvini discipulis novi, qui hanc in Deo scientiam agnoscat. 
—De Jure Dei. 

To what practical end this opinion went, it is not easy to see either as to such 
of the Calvinists or of the Arminians as adopted it. The point of the question, 
after all, was, whether the actual circumstances in which a free agent would be 
placed, and his conduct accordingly, could both be foreknown. Gomarus, whu 
adopted the view of conditional foreknowledge, as to Adam at least, conceded 
the liberty of the will, so far as the first man was concerned, to his opponents, 
but Episcopius and others conceded by this notion something of more importance 
to the supralapsarians, who denied that the prescience of future contingencies 
was at all possible. However both agreed to destroy the prescience of God as to 
actual contingencies, though the advocates of the Media Scientia -éserved the 
point as to posszble, or rather hypothetic ones, and thus the whole was, after all 
resolved into the wider question, Is the knowledge of future contingencies poss 
ble? This point will be presently considered. 





SEUCOND.! THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, 377 


because by his Spirit in the prophets they were foretold; and if the 
freedom of man can in these cases be reconciled to the prescience of 
God, there is no greater difficulty in any other case which can possibly 
occur. 

A second theory is, that the foreknowledge of contingent events, 
deing in its own nature impossible, because it implies a contradiction, it 
does no dishonour to the Divine Being to affirm, that of such events he 
has, and can have no prescience whatever; and thus the prescience of 
God, as to moral actions being wholly denied, the difficulty of reconciling 
it with human freedom and accountability has no existence. (4) 

To this the same answer must be given as to the former. It does not 
meet the case, so long as the Scriptures are allowed to contain prophecies 
of rewardable and punishable actions. 

That man is accountable to God for his conduct, and therefore free, 
that is, laid under no invincible necessity of acting in a given manner, 
are doctrines clearly contained in the Bible, and the notion’ of necessity 
has here its full and satisfactory reply ; but if a difficulty should be felt 
in reconciling the freedom of an action with the prescience of it, it 
affords not the slightest relief to deny the foreknowledge of God as to 
actions in general, while the Scriptures contain predictions of the con- 
duct of men whose actions cannot have been determined by invincible 
necessity, because they were actions for which they received from God 
a just and marked punishment. Whether the scheme of relief be, that 
the knowledge of God, like his power, is arbitrary ; or that the prescience 
of contingencies is impossible ; so long as the Scriptures are allowed to 
contain predictions of the conduct of men, good or bad, the difficulty 
remains in all its force. The whole body of prophecy is founded on the 
certain prescience of contingent actiuns, or it is not prediction, but guess 
and conjecture—to such fearful results does the denial of the Divine 
prescience lead! No one can deny that the Bible contains predictions 
of the rise and fall of several kingdoms; that Daniel, for instance, pro- 
phesied of the rise, the various fortune, and the fall of the celebrated 
monarchies of antiquity. But empires do not rise and fa!l wholly by 
immediate acts of God; they are not thrown up like new islands in the 
ocean, they do not fall like cities in an earthquake, by the direct exertion 
of Divine power. They are carried through their various stages of 
advance and decline, by the virtues and the vices of men, which God 
tuakes the instruments of their prosperitv or destruction. Counsels, 
wars, science, revolutions, all crowd in their agency ; and the predictions 
are of the combined and ultimate results of all these circumstances, 
which, as arising out of the vices and virtues of men, out of innu. 


(4) So little effeut has this theory in removing any difficulty, that persons of 
the most opposite theological sentiments have claimed it in their favour.—-Socinus 
and his followers,—all the sapralapsarian Calvinists,—and a few Arminians. 


378 THECLOGICAL INSTITUTES, _ [PART 


merable acts of choice, are contin,ert. Seen they must have been 
through all their stages, and seen in their results, fur prophecy has 
registered those results. The prescience of them cannut be denied, for 
that is on the record; and if certain prescience involves necessity, then 
are the daily virtues and vices of men not contingent. It was predicted 
that Babylon should be taken by Cyrus in the midst of a midnight revel, 
in which the gates should be left unguarded and open. Now, if all the 
actions which arose out of the warlike disposition and ambition of Cyrus 
were contingent, what becomes of the principle, that it is impossible to 
foreknow contingencies !—they were foreknown, because the result of 
them was predicted. If the midnight revel of the Babylonian monarch 
Was contingent, (the circumstance which led to the neglect of the gates 
of the city,) that also was foreknown, because predicted ; if not con- 
tingent, the actions of both monarchs were necessary, and to neither of 
them can be ascribed virtue or vice. 

Our Lord predicts, most circumstantially, the destruction of Jerusalem 
by the Romans. If this be allowed, then the contingencies involved in 
‘the conduct of the Jews who provoked that fatal war—in the Roman 
senate who decreed it—in the Roman generals who carried it on —in the 
Roman and Jewish soldiers who were engaged in it—were all foreseen, 
-and the result of them predicted: if they were not contingencies, that 
is, if they were not free actions, then the virtues and vices of both 
parties, and all the acts of skill, and courage, and enterprise ; and all 
the cruelties and sufferings of the besieged and the besiegers, arising 
out of innumerable volitions, and giving rise to the events so circum. 
stantially marked in the prophecy, were determined by an irreversible 
necessity. The 53d chapter of Isaiah predicts, that Messiah should be 
taken away by a violent death, inflicted by men in defiance of all the 
principles of justice. The record cannot be blotted out; and if the 
conduct of the Jews was not, as the advocates of this scheme will con- 
tend it was not, influenced by necessity, then we have all the contin. 
gencies of their hatred, and cruelties, and injustice predicted, and 
therefore foreknown. The same observations might be applied to St. 
Paul's prediction of a “ falling away,” in the Church; of the rise of 
the man of sin ;” and, in a word, to every prediction which the sacred 
volume contains. If there be any predictions in the Bible at all, every 
scheme which denies the prescience of contingencies must compel us 
into the doctrine of necessity, which in this place it is not necessary te 
discuss. 

On the main principle of the theory just mentioned, that the pre- 
science of contingent events is impossible, because their nature would 
be destroyed by it, we may add a few remarks. ‘That the subject is 
incomprehensible is to the manner in which the Divine Being foreknows 
future events of this or of any kind, even the greatest minds, whicb 


SECOND.) THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 379 


have applied themselves to such speculations, have fel. and acknow. 
ledged. The fact, that such a property exists in the Divine nature is, 
however, too clearly stated in Scripture to allow of any doubt in those 
who are disposed to submit to its authority ; and it is not left to the un- 
certainty of our speculations on the properties of spiritual natures, either 
to be confirmed or disproved. Equally clear is it that the moral actions 
of men are not necessitated, because human accountability is the main 
pilar of that moral government, whose principles, conduct, and ends, 
are stated so largely in Divine revelation. Whatever, therefore, becomes 
of human speculations, these points are sufficiently settled on an au- 
thority which is abundantly sufficient. ‘To the objection of metaphy- 
sicians of different classes, against either of these principles, that such 
is not the sense of the Scriptures, because the fact “cannot be so, it 
involves a contradiction,” not the least importance is to be attached, 
when the plain, concurrent, and uniform sense of Scripture, interpreted 
as any other book would be interpreted, determines to the contrary. It 
surely does not follow that a thing cannot be, because men do not see, or 
pretend not to see, that it can be. This would lay the foundation of our 
faith in the strength or weakness of other men’s intellect. We are not, 
however, in many cases, left wholly to this answer, and it may be shown 
that the position, that certain prescience destroys contingency, is a mere 
sophism, and that this conclusion is connected with the premise, by a 
confused use of terms. 

The great fallacy in the argument, that the certain prescience of a 
moral action destroys its contingent nature, lies in supposing that con- 
tingency and certainty are the opposites of each other. It is, perhaps, 
unfortunate, that a word which is of figurative etymology, and which 
consequently can only have an ideal application to such subjects, should 
have grown into common use in this discussion, because it is more liable 
on that account to present itself to different minds under different shades 
of meaning. * If, however, the term contingent in this controversy has 
any definite meaning at all, as applied to the moral actions of men, it 
must mean their freedom, and stands opposed not to certainty, but to 
necessity, A free action is a voluntary one; and an action which 
resuits from the choice of the agent, is distinguished from a necessary 
one in this, that it might not have been, or have been otherwise, accord- 
ing to the self-determining power of the agent. It is with reference to 
this specific quality of a free action, that the term contingency is used, 
—it might have been otherwise, in other words, it was not necessitated. 
Contingency in moral actions is, therefore, their freedom, and is opposed, 
not to certainty, but to necessity. ‘The very nature of this controversy 
fixes this as the precise meaning of the term. The question ts not, in 
point of fact, about the certainty of moral actions, that is, whether they 
will happen or aot; but about the nature of them, whether free or con- 


SU MILEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. |PART 


strained, whether they must happen or-not. Those who advocate this 
theory care not about the certainty (5) of actions, simply considered, 
that is, whether they will take place or not; the reason why they object 
to a certain prescience of moral actions is, that they conclude, that such 
a prescience renders them necessary. It is the quality of the action for 
which they contend, not whether it will happen or not. If contingency 
meant uncertainty, the sense in which such theorists take it, the dispute 
would be at an end. But though an uncertain action cannot be foreseen 
as certain, a free, unnecessitated action may ; for there is nothing in the 
knowledge of the action, in the least, to affect its nature. Simple know- 
ledge is, in no sense, a cause of action, nor can it be conceived to be 
causal, unconnected with exerted power ; for mere knowledge, therefore, 
an action remains free or necessitated, as the case may be. A 
necessitated action is not made a voluntary one by its being foreknown : 
a free action is not made a necessary one. Free actions foreknown 
will not, therefore, cease to be contingent. But how stands the case as 
to their certainty? Precisely on the same ground. The certainty of a 
“necessary action foreknown, does not result from the knowledge of the 
action, but from the operation of the necessitating cause; and in like 
manner, the certainty of a free action does not result from the know- 
ledge of it, which is no cause at all, but from the voluntary cause, that 
is, the determination of the will. It alters not the case in the least, to 
say that tie voluntary action might have been otherwise. Had it been 
otherwise, the knowledge of it would have been otherwise ; but as the 
will, which gives birth to the action, is not dependent upon the previous 
knowledge of God, but the knowledge of the action upon foresight of 
the choice of the will, neither the will nor the act 1s controlled by the 
knowledge, and the action, though foreseen, is still free or contingent. 
The foreknowledge of God has then no influence upon either the 
freedom or the certainty of actions, for this plain reason, that it is know. 
ledge, and not influence ; and actions may be certainly foreknown, with- 
out their being rendered necessary by that foreknowledge. But here it 
is said, If the result of an absolute contingency be certainly foreknown, 
it can have no other result, it cannot happen otherwise. This is not the 
true inference. It will not happen otherwise ; but I ask, why can it 
not happen otherwise? Can is an expression of potentiality, it denotes 
power or possibility. The objection is, that it is not possible that the 
ation should otherwise happen., But why not? What deprives it of 
that power? Ifa necessary action were in question, it could not other- 
wise happen than as the necessitating cause shal) compel; but then that 


(5) Certainty is, properly speaking, no quality of an action at all, unless it be 
taken in the sense of a fired and necessitated action; in this controversy it 
means the certainty which the mind that foresees has, that an action will be done, 
and the certainty is therefore in the mind, and not in the action. 


SECOND. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. | 38) 


would arise from the necessitating cause solely and uot from the pre. 
science of the action, which is not causal. But if the action be free, 
and it enter into the very nature of a voluntary action to be ancon. 
strained, then it might have happened in a thousand other ways, or not 
ave happened at ali; the foreknowledge of it no more affects its nature 
in this case than in the other. All its potentiality, so to speak, still re- 
mains, independent of foreknowledge, which neither adds to its power 
of happening otherwise, nor diminishes it. But then we are told, that 
the prescience of it, in that case, must be uncertain: not unless any 
person can prove, that the Divine prescience is unable to dart through 
all the workings of the human mind, all its comparison of things in the 
judgment, all the influences of motives on the affections, all the hesitan- 
cies, and haltings of the will, to its final choice. “ Such knowledge is 
tco wonderful for us,” but it is the knowledge of Him who “ understand- 
eth the thoughts of man afar off.” | 

But if a contingency will have a given result, to that result it must be 
determined. Not in the least. We have seen that it cannot be deter- 
mined to a given result by mere precognition, for we have evidence in 
our own minds that mere knowledge is not causal to the actions of 
another. It is. determined to its result by the will of the agent; but 
even in that case, it cannot be said, that it must be deiermined to that 
result, because it is of the nature of freedom to be unconstrained ; so 
that here we have an instance in the case of a free agent that he will 
act in some particular manner, but that it by no means follows from 
what well be, whether foreseen or not, that it must be. 

On this subject, so much controverted, and on which so much, in the 
way of logical consequence, depends, I add a few authorities. 

Dr. S. Clarke observes, “’They who suppose that events, which are 
called contingent, cannot be certainly foreknown, must likewise suppose 
that when there is not a chain of necessary causes, there can be no 
certainty of any future events; but this is a mistake, for let us suppose 
that there is in man a power of beginning motion, and of acting with 
what has, of late, been called philosophical freedom ; and let us sup- 
pose farther, that the actions of such a man cannot possibly be fore- 
known; will there not yet be in the nature of things, notwithstanding 
this supposition, the same certainty of event in every one of the man’s 
actions, as if they were ever so fatal and necessary? For instance, 
suppose the man, by an internal principle of motion, and an absolute 
freedom of mind, to do some particular action to-day, and suppose it was 
not possible that this action should have been foreseen yesterday, ws 
there not, nevertheless, the same certainty of event, as if it had beer 
foreseeo, and absolutely necessary? ‘That is, would it not have been as 
certain a truth yesterday, and from eternity, that this action was an 
event to be performed to-day, notwithstanding the supposed freedom, as 


382 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. . [PART 


it is now a certain dnd infallible truch that it is performed? Mere cers 
tainty of event, therefore, does ‘not, in any measure, imply necessity. 
And surely it implies no contradiction to suppose, that every future 
event which, in the nature of things, is now certain, may now be cer- 
tainly known by that intelligence which is omniscient. ‘The manner 
low God can foreknow future events, without a chain of necessary 


causes, it is indeed impossible for us to explain, yet some sort of gene- 


iil notion of it we may conceive. For, as 2 man who has no influence 
over another person’s actious, can yet often perceive beforehand what 
that other will do; and a wiser and more experienced man, with still 
greater probability will foresee what another, with whose disposition he is 
perfectly acquainted, will in certain circumstances do ; and an angel, with 
still less degree of error, may have a farther prospect into men’s future 
actions: so it is very reasonable to conceive, that God, without influenc- 
ing men’s wills by his power, or subjecting them to a chain of necessary 
causes, cannot but have a knowledge of future free events, as much 
more certain than men or angels can possibly have, as the perfection 
of his nature is greater than that of theirs. ‘The distinct manner how 
he foresees these things, we cannot, indeed, explain; but neither can 
we explain the manner of numberless other things, of the reality of 
which, however, no man entertains a doubt.” 

Dr. Copleston judiciously remarks :— 

“The course indeed of the material world seems to proceed upon 
such fixed and uniform laws, that short experience joined to close atten- 
tion is sufficient to enable a man, for all useful purposes, to anticipate 
the general result of causes now in action. In the moral world much 
greater uncertainty exists. Every one feels, that what depends upon 
the conduct of his fellow creatures is less certain, than what is to be 
brought about by the agency of the laws of matter: and yet even here, 
since man is a being of a certain composition, having such and such 
faculties, inclinations, affections, desires, and appetites, it is very pos- 
sible for those who study his nature attentively, especially for those who 
have practical experience of any individual or of any community of 
men, to foretell how they will be affected, and how they will act under 
any supposed circumstances. The same power (in an unlimited degree 
as before) it is natural and reasonable to ascribe to that Being, whe 
excels the wisest of us infinitely more than the wisest of us excels his 
fellow creatures. 

“[t never enters the mind of a person who reflects in this way, that 
his anticipation of another’s conduct lays any restraint upon that man’s 
conduct when he comes to act. The anticipation indeed is relative to 
himself, not to the other. If it affected him in the remotest degree, his 
conduct would vary in proportion to the strength of the conviction in the 
mind of the thinker that he will so act. But no man really believes in 


SECOND. THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 383 


this magical sympathy. Noman supposes the certainty of the event (to 
use a common, but, as I conceive, an improper term,) to correspond at 
all with the certainty of him who foretells or expects it. In fact, every 
tlay’s experience shows, that men are deceived in the event, even when 
they regarded themselves as most certain, and when they would readily 
nave used the strongest phrases to denote that certainty, not from any 
intention to deceive, but from an honest persuasion that such an event 
must happen. How is it then? God can never be deceived—his 
knowledge therefore is always accompanied or followed by the event— 
and yet if we get an idea of what hs knowledge is, by our own, why 
should we regard it as dragging the event along with it, when in our 
own case we acknowledge the two things to have no connection? 

“But here the advocate for necessity interposes, and says, True, 
your knowledge does not affect the event, over which you have no 
power: but God, who is all-powerful, who made all things as they are, 
and who knows all that will come to pass, must be regarded as render 
ing that necessary which he foreknows—just as even you may be cop 
sidered accessary to the event which you anticipate, exactly in 
proportion to the share you have had in preparing the instruments or 
forming the minds of those who are to bring it about. 

“'To this I answer, that the connection between knowledge and the 
event is not at all established by this argument. It is not because I 
knew what would follow, but because I contributed toward it, that it is 
influenced by me. You may if you please contend, that because God 
made every thing, therefore all things that happen are done by him. 
This is taking another ground, for the doctrine of necessity, which will 
be considered presently. All I maintain now is, that the notion of God’s 
foreknowledge ought not to interfere in the slightest degree with our 
belief in the contingency of events, and the freedom of human actions. 
The confusion has, I conceive, arisen chiefly from the ambiguity of the 
word certainty, used as it is even by learned writers, both in its relation 
to the mind which thinks, and to the object about which it is thinking.” 
(Inquiry into Necessity, &c.) 

To the above I add a passage from a divine of much older date, who 
has stated the argument with admirable clearness :-— 

In answer to the common argument, “ As a thing is, such is the 
knowledge of it : future contingencies are uncertain, therefore they can- 
not be known as certain,” he observes, “It is wonderful, that acute 
minds should not have detected the fallacy of this paralogism. For the 
major, which is vaunted as an axiom of undoubted truth, is most false 
unless it be properly explained. For if a thing is evil, shall the know- 
ledge of it be evil? Then neither God nor angels could know the sins 
of men, without sinning themselves! Again, should a thing be neces- 
sary. will the knowledge of it, on that account, be also necessary? But 


384 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. - PART 


many things are necessary in the nature of things, which either are 
unknown to us, or only known doubtfully. Many persons doubt ever 
the existence of God, which in the highest sense is necessary, so far are 
they from having a necessary knowledge of him. That proposition, 
therefore, is only true in this sense, that our knowledge must agree 
with the things which are known, and that we know them as they are 
a reality, and not otherwise. Thus I ought to think, that the paper on 
which I write is white and the ink black; for if I fancy the ink wLite, 
and the paper black, this is not knowledge, but ignorance, or rather de- 
ception. In like manner true knowledge ought to regard things neces- 
sary as necessary, and things contingent as contingent: but it requires 
not that necessary things should be known necessarily, and contingent 
things contingently ; for the contrary often happens. 

“ But the minor of the above syllogism is ambiguous and improper. 
The things about which our minds are exercised, are in themselves nei- 
ther certain nor uncertain. ‘They are called so only in respect of him 
who knows them; but they themselves are necessary or contingent. 
But if you understand by a certain thing, a necessary one, and by an 
uncertain thing that which is contingent, as many by an abuse of terms 
do, then your minor will appear to be identical and nugatory, for it will 
stand, ‘ Future contingencies are contingent,’ from which no canelusion 
can be drawn. It is to be concluded, that certitude and incertitude are 
not affections of the things which are or may be known, but of the intel- 
lect of him who has knowledge of them, and who forms different judgments 
respecting them. For one and the same thing, without any change in 
itself, may be certain and uncertain at the same time; certain indeed to 
him who knows it certainly, but to him who knows it not, uncertain. 
For example, the same future eclipse of the sun shall be certain to a 
skilful astronomer who has calculated it: uncertain to him who is 
ignorant of the laws of the heavenly bodies. But that cannot be said 
concerning the necessity and contingency of things. They remain such 
as they are in their own nature, whether we know them or not; for an 
eclipse, which from tne Jaws of nature must necessarily take place, is 
not made contingent by my ignorance and uncertainty whether it will or 
will not happen. For this reason they are mistaken who say that things 
determined by the decree of God, are necessary in respect of God; but 
that to us, who know not his decrees, they are contingent; for our igno. 
rance cannot make that which is future and necessary, because God hat. 
decreed it, change its nature, and become contingent. It is no cortra- 
diction indeed to say, that one and the same thing may be at once neces- 
sary and yet uncertain, but that it should be necessary and contingent is 
a manifest contradiction. To God, therefore, whose knowledge is infi- 
nite, future contingencies are indeed certain, but to angels and mer 
uncertain ; nor are they made necessary because God knows them cer- 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 38h 


tamly. The knowledge of God influences nothing extrinsically, nor 
changes the nature of things in any wise. He knows future necessary 
things as necessary, but contingencies as cuntingencies ; otherwise he 
would not know them truly, but be deceived, which cannot happen 
to God.” (Curcelleus, De Jure Dei, 1645.) 

The rudiments of the third theory which this controversy has called 
forth, may be found in many theological writers, ancient and modern ; 
but it is stated at large in the writings of Archbishop King, and requires 
some notice, because the views of that writer have of late been again made 
a subject of controversy. They amount, in brief, to this, that the fore- 
knowledge of God must be supposed to differ so much from any thing of 
the kind we perceive in ourselves, and from any ideas which we can 
possibly form of that property of the Divine nature, that no argument 
respecting it can be grounded upon our imperfect notions ; and that all 
controversy on subjects connected with it is idle and fruitless. 

_In establishing this view, Archbishop King, in his Sermon on Divine 
Predestination and Foreknowledge, has the following observations :— 

“Tt is in effect agreed on all hands, that the nature of Gop is incom. 
prehensible by human understanding ; and not only his nature, but like- 
wise his powers and faculties, and the ways and methods in which he 
exercises them, are so far beyond our reach, that we are utterly incapa- 
ble of framing exact and adequate notions of them. 

‘‘We ought to remember, that the descriptions which we frame .o 
ourselves of God, or of the Divine attributes, are not taken from any 
direct or immediate perceptions that we have of him or them ; but from 
some observations we have made of his works, and from the consideration 
of those qualifications, that we conceive would enable us to perform the 
like. 

‘It doth truly follow from hence, that God must either have these, or 
other faculties equivalent to them, and adequate to these mighty effects 
which proceed from them. And because we do not know what his 
faculties are in themselves, we give them the names of those powers, 
that we find would be necessary to us in order to produce such 
effects, and call them wisdom, understanding, and foreknowledge ; yet 
at Lhe same time we cannot but be sensible, that they are of a nature alto- 
gether different from ours, and that we have no direct and proper notion 
ar conception of them. Only we are sure, that they have effects like unto 
those that proceed from wisdom, understanding, and foreknowledge in 
us; and that when our works fail to resemble them in any particular, it 
is by reason of some defect in these qualifications. 

«Thus our reason teaches us to ascribe these attributes to God, by 
way of analogy to such qualities as we find most valuable in ourselves. 

«If we look into the Holy Scriptures, and consider the representations 


given us there of God or his attributes, we shall find them plainly bor. 
Vox. I. 25 


386 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


rowed from scme resemblance to things, with which we are acquainted 
by our senses. ‘Thus when the Holy Scriptures speak of God, they 
ascribe hands, and eyes, and feet to him: not that we should believe he 
has any of these members, according to the literal signification ; but the 
meaning is, that he has a power to execute all those acts, to the effect. 
ing of which these parts in us are instrumental : that is, he can converse 
with men, as well as if he hada tongue and mouth; he can discern all 
that we do or say, as perfectly as if he had eyes and ears; he can reach 
us as well as if he had hands and feet; he has. as true and substantial a 
being as if he*had a body; and he is as truly present every where, as 
if that body were infinitely extended. 

« After the same manner, we find him represented as affected with such 
passions as we perceive to be in ourselves, namely, as angry and pleased, 
as loving and hating, as repenting and changing his. resolutions, as full 
of mercy and provoked to revenge. And _ yet on reflection we cannot 
think, that any of these passions literally affect the Divine nature. 

«And as_the passions of men are thus by analogy ascribed to God, 
because these would in us be the principles of such outward actions, as 
we see he has performed ; so by the same condescension to the weakness 
of our capacities, we find the powers and operations of our minds 
ascribed to him. 

“The use of foreknowledge with us is to prevent any surprise when 
events happen, and that we may not be at a loss. what to do by things 
coming upon us. unawares. Now inasmuch as we are certain that 
nothing can surprise God, and that he can never be at a loss what to do; 
we conclude that God has a faculty to which our foreknowledge bears 
some analogy, therefore we call it by that name. 

“ But it does not follow from hence that any of these are literally m: 
God, after the manner they are in us, any more than hands or eyes, than 
love or hatred are ; on the contrary we must acknowledge, that those: 
things, which we call by these names, when attributed to God, are of so 
very different a nature from what they. are in us, and:so. superior to all 
that we can conceive, that in reality there is no more likeness between 
them, than between our hand and God’s power. Nor can we draw con- 
sequences from the real nature of one to that of the other, with more. 
justness of reason, than we can conclude, because our hand consists of 
fingers and joints, therefore the power of God is distinguished by such 
parts. 

«So that to argue, ‘because foreknowledge, as itis in. us, if supposed. 
infallible, cannot consist with the contingency of events, therefore what 
we call so in God cannot,’ is as far from reason, as.it. would be to con- 
clude, because our eyes cannot see in the dark, therefore.when God 1s 
said to see all things, his eyes must be enlightened with a perpetual; sun- 
shine ; or because. we cannot love or hate without passion, therefore 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 387 


when the Scriptures ascribe these to God, they teach us that he is liable 
to these affections as we are. . 

“ We ought, therefore, to interpret all these things, when attributed to 

God only by way of condescension to our capacities, in order to help 
us to conceive what we are to expect from him, and what duty we are 
o pay him. Particularly, the terms of foreknowledge, predestination, 
nay, of understanding and will, when ascribed to him, are not to be taken 
strictly or properly, nor are we to think that they are in him in the 
same sense that we find them in ourselves; on the contrary, we are to 
interpret them only by way of analogy and comparison.” 

These views have recently been advocated by Dr. Copleston, in: his 
“ Inquiry into the Doctrines of Necessity and Predestination ;” but, to this 
theory, the first objection is, that, like the former, it does not in the least 
relieve the difficulty, for the entire subduing of which it was adopted. 

For though foreknowledge in God should be admitted to be something 
of a “very different nature” to the same quality in man, yet as it is 
represented as something equivalent to foreknowledge, whatever that 
something may be; as, in consequence of it, prophecies have actually 
been uttered and fulfilled, and of such a kind, too, as relate to actions 
for which men have in fact been held accountable ; all the original diff. 
culty of reconciling contingent events to this something, of which human 
foreknowledge is a “ kind of shadow,” as “a map of China is to China 
itself,” remains in full force. The difficulty is shifted, but not removed ; 
it cannot even be with more facility slided past; and either the Christian 
world must be content to forego all inquiries into these subjects,—a 
consummation not to be expected, however it may be wished,—or the 
contest must be resumed on another field, with no advantage from better 
ground or from broader daylight. 

A farther objection to these notions is, that they are dangerous. 

For if it be true, that the faculties we ascribe to God are “of a nature 
altogether different from our own, and that we have no direct and proper 
notion or conception of them,” then, in point of fact, we have no proper 
revelation at all of the nature of God, and of his attributes, in the Scrip- 
tures ; and what we esteem to be such, is a revelation of terms, to which 
we can attach no “proper notion.” If this conclusion be well founded, 
then it is so monstrous that the premises on which it hangs must be 
unsound and anti-Scriptural. This alone is a sufficient general refuta- 
tion of the hypothesis: but a more particular examination will show that 
it rests upon false assumptions ; and that it introduces gratuitous diffi- 
culties, not called for by the supposed difficulty of reconciling the fore. 
knowledge of God with the freedom of human actions. 

1. It is assumed that the descriptions which we frame to ourselves 
of God, are taken from the observations we have made on his works, 
and from the consciousness of those qualifications which, we conceive, 


338 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. — _ PART 


would enable us to perform the like. This might be, in part, true of 
heathens left without the light of revelation ; but it is not true of those 
wh» enjoy that advantage. Our knowledge of God comes from the 
Sciiptures, which are taught to us in our infancy, and with which, 
either by reading or hearing, we become familiar as we grow up. The 
notiors we have of God, so far as they agree with the Scriptures, are, 
therefore, not those which we have framed by the process assumed bv 
the archbishop, but those which have been declared to us in the Sertp 
tures by God himself, as descriptions of his own nature. Ths makes 
a great difference. Our own modes of forming conceptions of the 
Divine nature would have no authority higher than ourselves; the 
announcements of Scripture are the word of God, communicating by 
human language the truth and reality of things, as to himself. This is 
the constant profession of the sacred writers ; they tell us, not what there 
is in man which may support an analogy between man and God, but 
what God is in himself. 

2. It is assumed, that because the nature of God is “ incomprehenst- 
ble,” we have no “ proper notion or conception of it.” The term ‘“ proper 
notion” is vague. It may mean “ an exact and adequate notion,” which 
it may be granted without hesitation that we have not; or it may mean 
a notion correct and true in itself, though not complete and comprehen- 
sive. A great part of the fallacy lies here. ‘To be incomprehensible, is 
not, in every case, and assuredly not in this, to be unintelligible. We 
may know God, though we cannot fully know him; and our notions 
may be true, though not adequate ; and they must be true, if we have 
rightly understood God’s revelation of himself. Of being, for instance, 
we can form a true notion, because we are conscious of our own 
existence; and though we cannot extend the conception to absolute 
being or self existence, because our being is a dependent one, we can 
yet supply the defect, as we are taught by the Scriptures, by the nega- 
tive notion of zndependence. Of spirit we have a true notion, and 
understand, therefore, what is meant, when it is said, that ‘* God is a 
spirit ;” and though we can have but an imperfect conception of an 
enfinite spirit, we can supply that want also, to all practical purposes, 
by the negative process of removing all imperfection, or limit of excel- 
lence, from our views of the Divine nature. We have a frue notion of 
the presence of one being with other beings, and with place; and 
though we cannot comprehend the mode in which God is omnipresent, 
we are able to conceive without difficulty the fact, that the Divine pre- 
sence fills all things. We have true notions of power and knowledge ; 
and can suppose them infinite, though how they should be so, we know 
not. And as to the moral attributes, such as truth, justice, and goodness, 
we have not only érue, but comprehensive, and for any thing that 
appears to the contrary, adequate notions of them; for our difficulties 


& 
BECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 389 


as to these attributes do not arise from any incapacity to conceive of 
what is perfect truth, perfect justice, and perfect goodness, but from our 
inability to show how many things, which occur in the Divine govern- 
ment, are to be reconciled to these attributes ;—and that, not because 
our notions of the attributes themselves are obscure, but because 
the things, out of which such questions arise, are either in themselves, 
or in their relations, but partially understood or greatly mistaken.— 
Job and his friends did not differ in abstract views of the justice 
of the moral government of God, but in reconciling Job’s afflictions 
with it. 

3. It is assumed that the nature of God is essentially different from 
the spiritual nature of man. ‘This is not the doctrine of Scripture.— 
When it says, that “God is a spirit ;” we have no reason to conclude 
that a distant analogy, such a one as springs out of mere relation, 
which, in a poetic imagination, might be sufficient to support a figure 
of speech, is alone intended. The very argument connected with these 
words, in the discourse of our Lord with the woman of Samaria, forbids 
this. It is a declaration of the nature of God, and of the worship suited 
to his nature ; and the word employed is that by which both Jews and 
Samaritans had been taught by the same inspired records, which they 
each possessed, to designate and conceive of the intellectual nature of 
man. ‘The nature of God, and the nature of man, are not the same; 
but they are similar, because they bear many attributes in common, 
though on the part of the Divine nature in a degree of perfection 
infinitely exceeding. The difference of degree, however, cannot prove 
a difference of essence,—no, nor the circumstance that one has attributes 
which the other has not,—in any sense of the word difference which 
could be of service to the advocates of this hypothesis. But if a total 
difference is proved as to the zntellectual attributes of God and men, that 
difference must be extended to the moral attributes also ; and so the very 
foundation of morals and religion would be undermined. This point 
was successfully pressed by Edwards against Archbishop King, and it 
is met very feebly by Dr. Copleston. “Edwards,” he observes, 
‘raises a clamour about the moral attributes, as if thez7 nature also 
must be held to be different in kind from human virtues, if the A:zow- 
ledge of God be admitted to be different in kind from ours.” Certainly 
this follows from the principles laid down by Archbishop King; and if 
his followers take his conclusions as to the intellectual attributes, they 
must take them as to the moral attributes also. If the faculties of God 
be “ of a nature altogether different from ours,’’ we have no more reason 
to except from this rule the truéh and the justice, than the wisdom and 
the prescience of God ; and the reasoning of Archbishop King is as con. 
clusive in the one case as in the other. 

The fallacy of the above assumptions is sufficient to destroy the hype 


399 TuEoLocfcaL INSTITLTES. |PARI 


thesis which has been built upon thera; and the argument from Scrip. 
ture may be shown to be as unfounded. It is, as the above extract 
_ will show, in brief this, that as the Scriptures ascribe, by analogy, hands, 
and eyes, and feet to God, and also the passions of love, hatred, anger, 
&ec, “because these would be in us the principles of such outward 
actions as we see he has performed; so, by the same condescension, 
to the weakness of our capacities, we find the powers and operations of 
our minds ascribed to him.” But will the advocates of this opinion 
look steadily to its legitimate consequences? We believe not; and 
those consequences must, therefore, be its total refutation. For if both 
our intellectual and moral attections are made use of but as distant ana- 
logies, and obscure intimations, to convey to us an imperfect knowledge 
of the intellectual powers and affections of the Divine nature, in the 
same manner as human hands, and human eyes, are made to represent 
his power and his knowledge,—it follows that there is nothing in the 
Divine nature which answers more truly and exactly to knowledge, 
justice, truth, mercy, and other qualities in man, than the knowledge of 
God answers to human organs of vision, or his power to the hands or 
the feet; and from this it would follow, that nothing is said in the 
Scriptures of the Divine Being, but what is, in the highest sense, figura- 
tive, and purely metaphorical. We are no more like God in our minds 
than in our bodies, and it might as truly have been said with respect to 
man’s bodily shape, as to his mental faculties, that man was made “ in 
the image of God.” (6) 


(6) ‘* Though his grace rightly lays down analogy for the foundation of his 
discourse, yet, for want of having thoroughly weighed and digested it, and by 
wording himself incautiously, he seems entirely to destroy the nature of it; 
insomuch that while he rejects the strict propriety of our conceptions and words, 
on the one hand, he appears to his antagonists to run into an extreme even 
below metaphor, on the other. 

‘‘ His greatest mistake is, that through his discourse he suppuses the members 
and actions of a human body, which we attribute to God in a pure metapuor, to 
be equally upon the same foot of analogy with the passions of a human soul, 
which are attributed to him in a lower and more imperfect degree of analogy ; 
and even with the operations and perfections of the pure mind or intellect 
which are attributed to him in a yet higher and more complete degree. In 
pursuance of this oversight, he expressly asserts love and anger, wisdom 
aid goodness, knowledge and foreknowledge, and all the other Divine attri- 
Lutes to be spoken of God, as improperly as eyes or ears; that there is no mure 
ikeness between these things in the Divine nature and in ours, than thero 
is between our hand and God’s power, and that they are not to be taken in the 
same sense. 

‘* Agreeably to this incautious and indistinct manner of treating a subject 
curious and difficult, he hath unwarily dropped s»me such shocking expressions 
as these, the best representations we can make uf God are infinitely short of truth. 
Which God forbid, in the sense his adversaries take it; for then all our reason. 
ings concerning him would be groundless and false. But the saying is evidently 


a 
ECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 391 


It is also to be observed, that when the Scriptures speak of the 
knowledge, power, and other attributes of God, in figurative language, 
taken from the eyes or hands of the body, it is sufficiently obvious that 
this language is metaphorical, not only from the reason of things itself, 
hut because the same ideas are also quite as often expressed without 
figure; and the metaphor therefore never misleads us. We have 
sufficient proof also that it never did mislead the Jews, even in the 
worst periods of their history, aud when their tendency to idolatry and 
gross superstition was most powerful. They made images in human 
shape of other gods; but never of Jenovan: the Jews were never 
anthropomorphites, whatever they might be beside. But it is equally 
certain, that they did give a literal interpretation to those passages in 
their Scriptures which speak of the knowledge, justice, mercy, &c, of 
God, as the same in kind, though infinitely higher in their degree 
of excellence, with the same qualities in men. .The reason is obvious: 
they could not interpret those passages of their holy writings which 
apeak of the hands, the eyes, and the feet of God literally ; because 
every part of the same sacred revelation was full of representations of ’ 
the Divine nature, which declared his absolute spirituality: and they 
zould not interpret those passages figuratively which speak of the intel 
lectual and moral qualities of God in terms that express the same qua- 
lities in men ; because their whole revelation did not furnish them with 
any hint, even the most distant, that there was a more literal or exact 
sense in which they could be taken. It was not possible for any man 
to take literally that sublimely figurative representation of the upholding 
and ruling power of God, where he is ‘said to “hold the waters of the 
ocean in the hollow of his hand,” unless he could also conclude that 
where he is said to “ weigh the hills in scales, and the mountains in a 
balance,” he was to understand this literally also. The idea suggested 
is that of sustaining, regulating, and adjusting power; but if he were 
told, that he ought to take the idea of power in as figurative a sense as 
that of the waters being held in the hollow of the hand of Ged, and his 
weighing the mountains in scales, he would find it impossible to form 
any idea of the thing signified at all. The first step in the attempt 
would plunge him into total darkness. The figurative hand assists him 


true in a favourable and qualified sense and meaning; namely, that they are 
infinitely short of the real, true, internal nature of God as he is in himself.— 
Again, that they are emblems indeed and parabolical figures of the Divine atiri- 
buts, which they are designed to signify; as if they were signs or figures of our 
own, altogether precarious and arbitrary, and without any real and true foun. 

dation of analogy between them in the nature of either God or man: and 
accordingly he unhappily describes the knowledge we have of God and his 
attributes, by the notion we form of a strange country by a map, which is only - 
paper and ink, strokes and lines.” (Bishop Brown’s Procedure of Human Under 

standing.) 


392 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. ~ [PART 


to form the idea of managing and cantrolling power, but the figurative 
power suggests nothing ; and so this scheme blots out entirely all reve- 
lation of God of any kind, by resolving the whole into figures, which 
represent nothing of which we can form any conception. 

The argument of Arcupisuor Kryc, from the passions which we 
ascribed to God in Scripture, is not more conclusive. ‘“ After the same 
manner we find him represented as affected with such passions as we 
perceive to be in ourselves, as angry and pleased, as loving and hating, 
as repenting and changing his resolutions, as full of mercy, and pro. 
voked to revenge ; and yet, on reflection, we cannot think that any of 
these passions literally affect the Divine nature.” But why not? As 
they are represented in Scripture to be affections of the Divine nature, 
and not in the gross manner in which they are expressed in this extract, 
there seems nothing improper in taking them lzterally ; and no neces- 
sity is made out to compel us to understand them to signify somewhat for 
which we have not a name, and of which we can form no idea. ‘The 
Scriptures nowhere warrant us to consider God as a cold metaphysical 
abstraction ; and they nowhere indicate to us that when they ascribe 
affections to him, they are to be taken as mere figures of speech. On 
the contrary, they teach us to consider them as answering substantially, 
though not circumstantially to the innocent affections of men and angels. 
Why may not anger be “literally” ascribed to God, not indeed as it 
may be caricatured to suit a theory, but as we find it ascribed in the 
Scriptures? It is not malignant anger, nor blind, stormy, and disturb- 
ing anger, which is spoken of; nor is this always, nor need it be at any 
time, the anger of creatures. ‘There is an anger which is without sin 
in man,—“ a perception of evil, and opposition to it, and also an emotion 
of mind, a sensation, or passion, suitable thereto.” (Wesiey.) There 
was this in our Lord, who was without sin; nor is it represented by 
the evangelists, who give us the instances, as even an infirmity of the 
nature He assumed. In God it may be allowed to exist in a different 
manner to that in which it is found even in men who are “angry and 
sin not ;” it is accompanied with no weakness, it is allied to no imper- 
fection ; but that it does exist as truly in him as in man, is the doctrine of 
Scripture ; and there is no perfection ascribed to God, to which it can 
be proved contrary, or with which we cannot conceive it to coexist. (7) 


(7) Melancthon says: ‘ Lhe Lord was very,angry with Aaron to have destrcy. 
ed him; and I [Moses] prayed for Aaron also at the same time, Deut. ix, 20. Let 
us not elude the exceedingly lamentable expressions which the Holy Ghost em. 
ploys when he says, God wus very angry; and let us not feign to ourselves a God 
of stone, or a Stoical Deity. For though God is angry in a ditferent manner from 
men, yet let us conclude that God was really angry with Aaron, and that Aaron 
was not then in [a state of} grace, but obnoxious to everlasting punishment. 
Dreadful was the fal! of Aaron, who had through fear yielded to the madness of 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 393 


Not only anger, we are told, is ascribed to God, but ‘the being pleased.” 
Let the term used be complacency, instead of one which seems to have 
been selected to convey a notion of a lower and less worthy kind; and 
there is no incongruity in the idea. He is the blessed or happy God, 
and therefore capable of pleasure. He looked upon his works, and saw 
that they were “good,” very good,’—words which suggest the idea 
of his complacency upon their completion; and this, when separated 
from all connection with human infirmity, appears to be a perfection, 
and not a detect. ‘To be incapable of complacency and delight, is the 
character of the Supreme Being of Ericurus and of the modern Hin- 
doos, of whose internal state, so to speak, deep sleep, and the surface 
of an unruftled lake, are favourite figurative representations. But of this 
refinement we have nothing in the Bible, nor is it in the Jeast neces- 
sary to our idea of infinite perfection. And why should not love exist 
in God, in more than a figurative sense? For this affection to be ac- 
companied with perturbation, anxiety, and weak or irrational partiality, is 
a mere accident. So we often see it in human beings; but though this 
affection, without any concurrent infirmity, be ascribed to God, it surely 
does not follow that it exists in him, as something in nature “ wholly 
different” from love in wise and holy creatures, in angels and in saints. 
Not only the beauty, the force, and the encouragement of a thou- 
sand passages of Scripture would be lost, upon this hypothesis ; but 
their meaning also. Love in God is something, we are told, which is so 
called, because it produces similar. effects to those which are produced 
by love in man ; but what this something is, we are not informed; and 
the revelation of Scripture as to God, is thus reduced to a revelation 
of his acts only, but not, in the least, of the principles from which they 


flow. (8) 


the people when they instituted the Egyptian worship. Being warned by this 
example, let us not confirm ourselves in security, but acknowledge that it is 
possible for elect and renewed persons horribly to fall,” &c. (Loci Precipus 
Theologi, 1543.) 

(8) ‘It would destroy the confidence of prayer, and the ardour of devotion, 
if we could regard the Deity as subsisting by himself, and as having no sympa- 
thies, but mere abstract relations to the whole family in heaven and earth; and 
1 look upon it as one of the most rational and philosophical confutations of your 
system, that it is fitted neither for the theory nor the practice of our religion ; 
and that, if we could adopt it, we must henceforth exchange the language of 
Scripture for the anthems of Epicurus :-— 

‘¢Qmnis enim per se Divim natura necesse est, 
Immortali avo summa cum pace fruatur, 
Semota ab nostris rebus, sejunctaque longe ; 
Nam privata dolore emni, privata periculis, 
Ipsa suis pollens opibus, nihil indiga nostri, 
Nec bene promeritis capitur, nec tangitur ira. 


«It is in direct opposition to all such vain and skeptical speculations, that Chris. 


B94 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTRS. ]PART 


The same observations may 'b2 applied to “mercy aia revenge,” ‘by 
the latter of which the archbishop can mean nothing more than judicial 
vengeance, or retribution, though an equivocal term has been adopted, 
ad captandum.  Repenting, and changing his resolutions,” are impre- 
perly placed among the affections ; but, freed from ideas of human in- 
firmicy, they may be, without the least dishonour to the fulness of the 
Divine perfections, ascribed to God in as literal a sense as we find ‘them 
stated in the Scriptures. They there clearly signify no more than the 
change which takes place in the affections of God, his anger or his 
love, as men turn from ‘the practice of righteousness, or repent and ‘turn 
back again to him; aud the consequent changes in his dispensations 
toward them as their Governor and Lord. This is the Scriptural doc- 
trine, and there is nothing in it which is not most worthy of God, though 
literally interpreted ; nothing which is not consistent with his absolute . 
immutability. He is unchangeably the lover and the rewarder of righteous- 
ness, unchangeably the hater and the judge of iniquity; and as ‘his crea- 
tures are righteous or wicked, or are changed from the one state to the 
other, they become the objects of the different regards, and of the differ. 
ent administrations, of the same righteous and gracious Sovereign, who, 
by these very changes, shows that he is without variableness, or shadow 
of turning. 

If then there is no reason for not attributing even certain affections 
of the human mind to Ged, when connected with absolute perfection and 
excellence, in their nature and in their exercise, no reason certainly can 
be given for not considering his intellectual attributes, represented, as 
to their nature though not as to their degree, by terms taken from the 
faculties of the human mind, as corresponding with our own. But the 
matter is placed beyond all doubt by the appeal which is so often made 
in the Bible to these properties in man, not as illustrations only of some- 
thing distantly and indistinctly analogous to properties in the Divine 
nature, but as representations of the nature and reality of these qualities 
in the Supreme Being, and which are, therefore, made the grounds of 
argument, the basis of duty, and the sources of consolation. 

With respect to the nature of God, it is sufficient to refer to the pas- 
sage before mentioned,—“ Gop is a Sprrrir ;—where the argument is, 
that he requires not a ceremonial but a spiritual worship, the worship 
of man’s spirit; because he himself is a Srrrrr. How this argument 
could be brought out on Archbishop Krne’s and Dr. Corieston’s theory, 
it is difficult to state. It would be something of this kind:—Gop is a 
Srrair; that is, he is called a Sprrrr, because his nature is analogous 
to the spiritual nature of man: but this analogy implies no similarity of 


tianity always represents and speaks of the Deity as participating, so far as in. 
finity and perfection may participate, in those feelings and affections which belong 


to uur rational natures.” (GRiNFiELD’s Vindicie Analogice.) 


SECOND.) THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 395 


nature : it is a mere analogy of relation ; and therefore, though we have 
no direct and proper uotion of the nature of God, yet, because he is 
called a Spirit, “they that worship him must worship him in spirit and 
in truth.” This is indeed far from being an intelligible, and it is still 
less a practical, argument. 

With respect to his intellectual attributes, it is argued in Scripture, 
“He that teacheth man knowledge, shall not he know?” Here the 
knowledge of God is supposed to be of the same nature as the know- 
ledge of man. This is the sole foundation of the argument; which 
would have appeared indescribably obscure, if, according to Archbishop ~ 
King’s hypothesis, it had stood,—‘ He that teacheth man knowledge, 
shall he not have somewhat in his nature, which, because it gives rise to 
actions similar to those which proceed from knowledge, we may call 
knowledge, but of which we have no direct or proper notion ?” 

With respect to his moral attributes, we find the same appeals,- 
* Shall not the Judge of the whole earth do ight?” Here the abstract 
term right is undoubtedly used in the sense commonly received among 
men, and is supposed to be comprehensible by them.—*“< The righteous 
Lorp loveth righteousness.” The righteousness in man which he loveth, 
is, clearly, correspondent in its kind to that which constitutes him emi- 
nently “the righteous Lord.’”’—Still more forcibly, the house of Israel 
is called upon “to judge between him and his vineyard :” he conde- 
scends to try his own justice by the notions of justice which prevail 
ainong men; in which there could be no meaning, if this moral quality 
were not in God and in man of the same kind.—*< Hear now, O house 
of Israel, is not my way equal?” But what force would there be in this 
challenge, designed to silence the murmurs of a people under correction, 
as though they had not been justly dealt with, if justice among men had 
no more resemblance to justice in God than a hand to power, or an eye 
to knowledge, or “a map of China to China itself?’ The appeal is to 
a standard common to both, and by which one might be as explicitly 
determined as the other. (9) Finally, the ground of all praise and ado- 


(9) How can we confess God to be just, if we understand it not? But how can 
we understand him so, but by the measures of justice ? and how shall we know 
that, if there be two justices, one that we know, and one that we know not, one 
contrary to another? Ifthey be contrary, they are not justice ; for justice can 
be no more opposed to justice, than truth to truth: if they be not contrary, then 
that which we understand to be just in us, is just in God; and that which is iust 
once, is just for ever in the same case and circumstances: and, indeed, how is it 
that we are in all things of excellency and virtue to be like God, and to be meek 
like Christ; to 5: humble as he is humble, and to be pure like God, to be just after 
his example, to be merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful? If there is but 
one mercy, and one justice, and one meekness, then the measure of these, and the 
reason, is eternally the same. If there be two, either they are not essential to God, 
or else not imitable by us: and then how can we glorify God, and speak honour 


8965 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. | [PART 


ration of God for works of mercy and judgment,—of all trust in God, 
on account of his faithfulness and truth,—and of all imitation of God in 
his mercy and compassion,—is laid in every part of the word of God, not 
surely in this, that there are unknown and unapprehended qualities of 
some kind in God, which lead him to perform actions similar to those 
which flow from justice, truth and mercy in men; but in the considera 
tion that he is justice itself, truth itself, and goodness itself. ‘The bypo- 
thesis is therefore contradicted by the Scripture ; and though it has been 
assumed in favour of a great truth,—that the prescience of God does not 
destroy the liberty of man,—that truth needs not so cumbrous and mis- 
chievous an auxiliary. Divine foreknowledge and the freedom of human 
agency are compatible, not because foreknowledge in God is a figure of 
speech, or something different in kind to foreknowledge in’ man; but 
because knowledge, simply considered, whether present, past, or future, 
can have no influence upon action at all, and cannot therefore change a 
contingent action into a necessary one. 

For, after all, where does the great hesfouieal difficulty. lie, for the 
evasion of which so much is to be sacrificed? ‘The prescience, coun- 
sels, and plans of God, are prescience, counsels, and plans, which re- 
spect free agents, as far as men are concerned ; and unless we superadd 
influence to necessitate, or plans to entice irresistibly and to entrap in- 
evitably, into some given course of conduct, there is clearly no incon- 
gruity between these and human freedom. ‘There is a difficulty in 
concciving how foreknowledge should be absolute, as there is a difficulty 
in conceiving how God’s present knowledge should penetrate the heart 
of man, and know his present thoughts: but neither party argues from 
the incomprehensibility of the mode to the impossibility of the thing. 
The great difficulty does not then lie here. It seems to be planted 
precisely in this, that God should prohibit many things, which he never- 
theless knows will occur, and in the prescience of which he regulates 
his dispensations to bring out of these circumstances various results, 
which he makes subservient to the displays of his mercy and his jus- 
tice ; and particularly, that in the case of those individuals who, he 
knows, will finally perish, he exhorts, warns, invites, and, in a word, 
takes active and influential means to prevent a foreseen result. ‘This 
forms thie difficulty ; because, in the case of man, the prescience of 
failure would, in many cases, paralyze all effort,—whereas, in the go 
vernment of God, men are treated, in our views, with as much énlensity 
of care and effort, as though the issue of things was entirely unknown. 
But if the perplexity arises from this, nothing can be more clear than 


of his name, and exalt his justice, and magnify his truth, and sincerity, and 
simplicity, if truth and simplicity, and justice, and mercy in him is not that thing 
which we understand, and which we are to imitate ?” &c. (Bishop TAaYLor’s 
* Ductar Dubitantium.” 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, 397 


-hat the question is not, how to reconcile God’s prescience with the 
jreedom of man; but how to reconcile the conduct of God toward man, 
considered as a free agent, with his own prescience; how to assign a 
congruity to warnings, exhortations, and other means adopted to prevent 
destruction as to individuals, with the certain foresight of that terrible 
result. In this, however, no moral attribute of God is impugned. On 
the contrary, mercy requires the application of means of deliverance, 1f 
man be under a dispensation of grace ; and justice requires it, if man is 
to be judged for the use or abuse of mercy. The difficulty then entirely 
resolves itself into a mere matter of feeling, which, of course,—as we 
cannot be judges of a nature infinite in perfection, though similar to 
what is excellent in our own, nor of proceedings which, in the unli- 
mited range of the government of God, may have connections and 
bearings beyond all our comprehension,—we cannot reduce to a human 
standard. Is it, then, to adjust a mere matter of feeling, that we are to 
make these outrageous interpretations of the word of God, in what he 
hath spoken of himself? And are we to deny that we have no “ proper 
or direct notion of God,” because we cannot find him out to perfection ? 
This difficulty, which we ought not to dare to try by human standards, 
is not one however, we again remark, which arises at all out of the 
relation of the Divine prescience to the liberty of human actions ; and 
it is entirely untouched by any part of this controversy. We fall into 
new difficulties through these speculations, but do not escape the true 
one. If the freedom of man is denied, the moral attributes of God are 
impugned ; and the difficulty, as a matter of feeling, is heightened. 
Divine prescience cannot be denied, because the prophetic Scriptures 
have determined that already ; and if Archbishop King’s interpretation 
of foreknowledge be resorted to, the something substituted for prescience, 
and equivalent to it, comes in, to bring us back, in a fallacious circle, 
to the point from which we started. 

It may therefore be certainly concluded, that the omniscience of God 
comprehends his certain prescience of all events however contingent ; 
and if any thing more were necessary to strengthen the argument above 
given, it might be drawn from the irrational, and, above all, the unscrip- 
tural consequences, which would follow from the denial of this doctrine. 
These are forcibly stated by President Edwards :— 

“It would follow from. this notion, (namely, that the Almighty doth 
not foreknow what will be the result of future contingencies,) that as 
God is liable to be continually repenting what he has done; so he must 
be exposed to be constantly changing his mind and intentions as to his 
future conduct ; altering his measures, relinquishing his old designs, and 
forming new schemes and projections. For his purposes, even as to the 
main parts of his scheme, namely, such as belong to the state of his - 
moral kingdom, must be always liable to be broken, through want of 


398 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. - {PART 


foresight ; and he must be continually putting his system to rights, as it 
sets out of order, through the contingence of the actions of moral 
agents: he must be a Being, who, instead of being absolutely immutable, 
must necessarily be ee subject of infinitely the most numerous acts of 
repentance, and changes of intention, of any being whatsoever ; for this 
plain reason, that his vastly extensive charge comprehends an infinitely 
greater number of those things which are to him contingent and uncer- 
tain. In such a situation he must have little else to do, but to mend 
broken links as well as he can, and be rectifying his disjointed frame 
and disordered movements, in the best manner the case will allow. 
The supreme Lord of all things must needs be under great and mise- 
rable disadvantages, in governing the world which he has made, and has 
the care of, through his being utterly unable to find out things of chief 
importance, which hereafter shall befall his system; which, if he did 
but know, he might make seasonable provision for. In many cases, 
there may be very great necessity that he should make provision, in the 
manner of his ordering and disposing things, for some great events 
which are to happen, of vast and extensive influence, and endless conse- 
quence to the universe; which he may see afterward, when it is too 
late, and may wish in vain that he had known beforehand, that he might 
have ordered his affairs accordingly. And it is in the power of man, on 
these’ principles, by his devices, purposes, and actions, thus to disappoint 
God, break his measures, make .him continually to change his mind, 
subject him to vexation, and bring him into confusion.” 


CHAPTER V. 
Arrrisutres of God—Immutability, Wisdom. 


ANoTHER of the qualities of the Divine nature, on which the sacred 
writers often dwell, is his unchangeableness. This is indicated in his’ 
august and awful title, 1 am. All other beings are dependent and mu- 
table, and thus stand in striking contrast to him who is independent, and 
therefore capable of no mutation. ‘ Of old hast thou laid the foundation’ 
of the earth; and the heavens are the work of thy hands; they shall 
perish ; but thou shalt endure,—yea, all of them shall wax old like a 
garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be 
changed; but thou art the samn, and thy years shall have no end.— 
He is the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow’ 
of turning.—His counsel standeth fast for ever, and the thoughts of hi- 
heart to all generations.—His mercy endureth for ever.—His right- 


eousness is like the great mountains, firm and unmovable.—I am the 
Lord, I change not.” 


*ECOND./ THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 399 


Of this truth, so important to religion and to morals, there are many 
confirmations from subjects constantly open to observation. The genera! 
order of nature, in the revolutions of the heavenly bodies; the succes. 
sion of seasons; the laws of animal and vegetable production ; and the 
perpetuation of every species of beings, from which, if there be occa. 
sional deviations, they prove the general regularity and stability of this 
material syste.n, or they would cease to attract attention. The ample 
universe, therefore, with its immense aggregate of individual beings and 
classes of being, displays not only the all-comprehending and pervading 
power of God; but, as it remains from age to age subject to the same 
laws, and fulfilling the same purposes, it is a visible image of the exist- 
ence of a being of steady counsels, free from caprice, and liable to no 
control. ‘The moral government of God gives its evidence also to the 
same truth. The laws under which we are now placed, are the same 
as those which were prescribed to the earliest generations of men. 
What was vice then, is vice now; and what is virtue now, was then 
virtue. Miseries of the same kind and degree inflict punishment on the 
former ; peace and blessedness, as formerly, accompany the latter. God 
has manifested his will to men by successive revelations, the patriarchal, 
the Mosaic, and the Christian, and those distant from each other many 
ages; but the moral principles on which each rests, are precisely the 
same, and the moral ends which each proposes. Their differences are 
circumstantial, varying according to the age of the world, the condition 
of mankind, and his own plans of infinite wisdom ; but the identity of 
their spirit, their tnfluence, and their character, shows their author to be 
an unchangeable being of holiness, truth, justice, and mercy. Vicious 
men have now the same reason to tremble before God, as in former 
periods, for he is still “ of purer eyes than to behold iniquity ;” and the 
penitent and the pious have the same ground of hope, and the same sure 
foundation of trust. These are the cautionary and the cheering moral 
uses to which the sacred writers constantly apply this doctrine. He is 
“the Lord, the hope of their fathers ;’? and in all the changes and 
vicissitudes of life, this is the consolation of his people. that he will 
never leave them, nor forsake them. “'Though the mountains depart, 
and the hills be removed, yet my kindness shall not depart from thee, 
nor shall the covenant of my peace be removed.” 

It is true, that the stability of the Divine operations, and counsels, as 
indi sated by the laws of the material universe, and the revelations of his 
will, only show the immutability of God through those periods within 
which these operations and dispensations have been in force; but in 
Scripture they are constantly represented as the results of an immuta- 
bility which arises out of the perfection of the Divine nature itself, and 
which is therefore essential to it. “1am the Lord, I change not:” he 
changes not, because he is “the Lord.”—With him there is ‘no vari 


400 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


ableness, neither shadow of turning ;” because he is “the Father of 
lights,” the source. and fulness of all light and perfection whatever. 
Change in any sense which implies defect and infirmity, and therefore 
imperfection, is impossible to absolute perfection ; and immutability is 
therefore essentia] to his Godhead. In this sense, he is never capable 
of any kind of change whatever, as even a heathen has so strongly 
expressed it, ovdsmors, ovdawn, ovdayws oAAoWaW, ovdeusoy evOsyETas 
(Prato in Phed.) For “if we consider the nature of God, that he is 
a self-existent and independent Being, the great Creator and wise Go- 
vernor of all things; that he is a spiritual and simple being, void of all 
parts and all mixture, that can induce a change; that he is a sovereign 
and uncontrollable Being, which nothing from without can affect or work 
an alteration in; that he is an eternal being, which always has, and 
always will go on in the same tenor of existence ; an omniscient being, 
who, knowing all things, has no reason to act contrary to his first 
resolves ; and, in all respects, a most perfect being, that can admit of no 
addition or diminution ; we cannot but believe, that both in his essence, 
in his knowledge, and in his will and purposes, he must of necessity be 
unchangeable. ‘To suppose him otherwise, is to suppose him an imper- 
fect being: for if he change, it must be either to a greater perfection 
than he had before, or to a less; if to a greater perfection, then was 
there plainly a defect in him, and a privation of something better than 
what he had, or was; then again was he not always the dest, and con- 
sequently not always God: if he change to a lesser perfection, then 
does he fall into a defect again; lose a perfection he was possessed 
once of, and so ceasing to be the best being, cease at the same time to 
be God. ‘The sovereign perfection of the Deity therefore is an invin- 
cible bar against all mutability ; for, which way soever we suppose him 
to change, his supreme excellency is nulled or impaired by it: for since 
in all changes, there is something from which, and something to which, 
the change is made, a loss of what the thing had, or an acquisition of 
what it had not, it must follow, that if God change to the better, he was 
not perfect before, and so no: God; if to be worse, he will not be per- 
fect, and so no longer God, after the change. We esteem changeable- 
ness in men either an imperfection or a fault: their natural changes, 
as to their persons, are from weakness and vanity ; their moral changes, 
as to their inclinations and purposes, are from ignorance or inconstancy, 
and therefore this quality is no way compatible with the glory and 
attributes of God.” (Charnock.) 

In his being and perfections, God is therefore eternally THE samE. 
He cannot cease to be, he cannot be more perfect because his perfection 
is absolute ; he cannot be less so, because he is independent of ali ex- 
ternal power, and has no internal principle of decay. We are not 
however so to interpret the immutability of God, as though his operatzans 


SECOND. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 401 


admitted no change, and even no contrariety; or that his mind was 
incapable of different regards and affections toward the same creatures 
under different circumstances. He creates and he destroys ; he wounds 
and he heals; he works and ceases from his works ; he loves and hates ; 
but these, as being under the direction of the same immutable wisdom, 
holiness, goodness, and justice, are the proofs, not of changing, but of 
unchanging principles, as stated in the preceding chapter. They are 
perfections, not imperfections. Variety of operation, the power to com- 
mence, and cease to act, show the /iberty of his nature; the direction 
of this operation to wise and good ends shows its excellence. Thus in 
Scripture language “he repents” of threatened, or commenced punish- 
ment, and shows mercy ; or “is weary of forbearing” with the obstinately 
guilty, and so inflicts vengeance. Thus, “he hates the evil doer,” and 
“Joveth the righteous.” That love too may be lost, “if the righteous 
turn away from his righteousness ;” and that hatred may be averted, 
* when the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness.” There is 
a sense in which this may be called change in God, but it is not the 
change of imperfection and defect. It argues precisely the contrary. 
[f when “the righteous man turneth away from his righteousness,” 
God’s love to him were unchangeable, he could not be the unchangeably 
holy God, the hater of iniquity ; and “ when the wicked man turneth 
away from his wickedness,” and, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, be- 
comes a new creature, if he did not become the object of God’s love, 
God would not be the unchangeable lover of righteousness. By these 
Scriptural doctrines, the doctrine of the Divine immutability is not 
therefore contradicted, but confirmed. 

Various speculations, however, on the Divine immutability occur in 
the writings of divines and others, which, though often well intended, 
ought to be received with caution, and sometimes even rejected as 
bewildering or pernicious. Such are the notions, that God knows every 
thing by zntuition ; that there is no succession of ideas in the Divine 
mind, that he can receive no new idea; that there are no affections in 
God, for to suppose that would suppose that he is capable of emotion ; 
that if there are affections in God, as love, hatred, &c, they always. 
exist in the same degree, or else he would suffer change: for these and 
other similar speculations, recourse may be had to the schoolmen, and 
metaphysicians, by those who are curious in such subjects; but the im- 
pression of the Divine character, thus represented, will be found very 
different to that conveyed by those inspired writings in which God is not 
spoken of by men, but speaks of himself ; and nothing could be more 
easily shown than that most of these notions are either idle, as assuming 
that we know more of God than is revealed; or such as tend to repre- 
sent the Divine Being as rather a necessary, than a free agent, and his - 


morai perfections as resulting from a blind physical necessity of nature. 
You’ | 26 


102 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. _ [PART 


more than from an essential moral excellence, or, finally, as unintelli- 
gible, or absurd. As a specimen of the latter, the following passages 
may be taken froma work insome repute. The arguments are drawn 
from the schoolmen, and though broadly.given by the author, will be 
found more or less to ténge the remarks on the immutability of God, in 
the most current systems of theology, and discourses on the attributes :— 

‘His knowledge is independent upon the objects known, therefore 
whatever changes there are in them, there is none in him. Things 
known are considered either as past, present, or to come, and these are 
not known by us in the same way ; for concerning things past it must be 
said that we once knew them; or of things to come, that we shall 
know them hereafter; whereas God, with one view, comprehends all 
things past and future, as though they were present. 

“ If God’s knowledge were not unchangeable, he might be said to have 
different thoughts or apprehensions of things at one time, from what he 
«s at another, which would argue a defect of wisdom. And indeed a 
change of sentiments implies ignorance, or weakness of understanding ; 
for to make advances in knowledge, supposes a degree of ignorance: 
and to decline therein is to be reduced to a state of ignorance : now it 
is certain, that both these are inconsistent with the infinite perfection 
of the Divine mind; nor can any such defect be applied to him, whe 
is called, The only wise God.” (RipeLey’s Body of Divinity.) 

In thus representing the knowledge of God as “ independent of the 
objects known ;” in order to the establishing of such an immutabilit, 
of knowledge, as is not only not inconsistent with the perfection of 
that attribute, but without which it could not be perfect ; and in deny- 
ing that knowledge in God has any respect to the past, present, and 
future of things, a very important distinction between the knowledge 
of things possible, and the knowledge of things actual, both of which 
must be attributed to God, is strangely overlooked. 

In respect of possible beings, the Divine knowledge has no relation to 
time, and there is in it no past, no future; he knows his own wisdom 
and omnipotence, and that is knowing every thing respecting them. 
But to the possible existence of things, we must now add actual exist- 
ence; that commenced with time, or time with that. Here then is 
another branch of the Divine knowledge, the knowledge of things 
actually existing, a distinction with which the operations of our own 
minds make us familiar ; and from the actual existence of things arise 
order and succession, past, present, and future, not only in the things 
themselves, but in the Divine knowledge of them alsu ; for as there 
could be no knowledge of things in the Divine mind as actually existing, 
which did not actually exist, for that would be falsehood, not truth, so if 
things have heen brought into actual existence in succession, the know- 
ledge of tneir actual existence must have been successive also; for as 


SECOND.) THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES 403 


actual existences they could not be known as existing before they were. 
The actual being of things added nothing to the knowledge of the 
.nfinite mind as to their powers and properties. Those he knew from 
simself, the source of all being, for they all depended upon his will, 
power, and wisdom. ‘There was no need, for instance, to set the 
mechanism of this universe in motion, that he might know how it would 
play, what properties it would exhibit, what would be its results ; but the 
knowledge of the universe, as a congeries of beings in ideal, or possible 
existence, was not the knowledge of it as a real existence; that, as far 
as we Can see, was only possible when “he spake and it was done, when 
he commanded and it stood fast :” the knowledge of the actual existence 
of things with God is therefore successive, because things come into 
being in succession, and, as to actual existences, there is foreknowledge, 
present knowledge, and after knowledge, with God as well as with our- 
selves. 

But not only is a distinction to be made between the knowledge of God 
as to things possibly, and things actually existing ; but also between his 
knowledge of all possible things, and of those things to which he deter- 
mined before their creation to give actual existence. To deny that in 
the Divine mind any distinction existed between the apprehension of 
things which would remain possible only, and things which in their time 
were to come into actual being, would be a bold denial of the perfect 
xnowledge of God. | 

Here however it is intimated, that this makes the knowledge of God 
to be derived from something out of himself, and if he derive his 
knowledge from, something out of himself, then it must be dependent. 
And what evil follows from this? The knowledge of the nature, 
properties, and relations of things, God has from himself, that is from 
the knowledge he has of his own wisdom and omnipotence, by which 
the things that are have been produced, and from which only they conld 
be produced, and in this respect his knowledge is not dependent ; but the 
knowledge that they actually exist is not from himself, except as he 
makes them to exist; and when they are made to be, then is the know- 
ledge of their actual existence derived from them, that is, from the 
fact itself. As long as they are, he knows that they are; when they 
cease to be, he knows that they are not; and before they exist he knows 
that they do not yet exist. His knowledge of the crimes of men, for 
instance, as actually committed, is dependent upon the committal of 
those crimes. He knows what crime is, independent of its actual ex- 
istence ; but the knowledge of it as committed, depends not on himself, 
but upon the creature. And so far is this from derogating from the know- 
ledge of God, that, according to the common reason of things, it is thus 
only that we can suppose the knowledge of God ‘~ be exact and perfect. 

But this is not al! which sustains the opinion, that there is order and 


404 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. - | PART 


succession also in the knowledge of the Divine Being. It is not only as 
far as the knowledge of the successive and transient actual existence of 
things is concerned, that both fore and after knowledge are to be ascribed 
to God, but also in another respect. Authors of the class just quoted, 
speak as though God himself had no ideas of time, and order, and suc- 
cession ; as though past, and present, and to come, were so entirely and 
exclusively human, that even the infinite mind itself had not the power 
of apprehending them. But if there be actually a successive order of 
events as to us, and if this be something real, and not a dream, then 
must there be a corresponding knowledge of it 2n him, and therefore, in 
all things which respect us, a knowledge of them as past, present, or to 
come, that is, as they are in the experience of mankind, and in the truth 
of things itself. Beside this, if there be what the Scriptures call 
“ purposes” with God; if this expression is not to be ranked with those 
figures of speech which represent Divine power by a hand and an arm, 
then there is foreknowledge, strictly and properly so called, with God. 
The knowledge of any thing actually existing is collateral with its ex- 
istence ; but as the intention to produce any thing, or to suffer it to be 
produced, must be before the actual existence of the thing, because that 
1s finite and caused, so that very intention is in proof of the precognition 
of that which is to be produced, immediately by the act of God, or 
mediately through his permission. The actual occurrence of things in 
succession as to us, and in pursuance of his purpose or permission, is 
therefore a sufficient proof of the existence of a strict and proper 
prescience of them by almighty God. As to the possible nature, and 
properties, and relations of things, his knowledge may have no suc- 
cession, no order of time; but when those archetypes of things in the 
eternal mind, come into actual being by his power or permission, it is in 
pursuance of previous intention: ideas of time are thus created, so to 
speak, by the very order in which he produces them, or purposes to pro- 
duce them, and his knowledge of them as realities corresponds to their 
nature and relations, because it is perfect knowledge. He knows them 
before they are produced, as things which are to be produced or per 
mitted ; when they are produced, he knows them with the additional idea 
of their actual being ; and when they cease to be, he knows them as 
things which have been. 

Allied to the attribute of immutability is the L1BErTY of God, which 
enables us to conceive of his unchangeableness in the noblest and most 
worthy manner, as the result of his will, and infinite moral excellence, 
and not as the consequence of a blind and physical necessity. ‘* He 
doth whatever pleaseth him,” and his actions are the result of will and 
choice. This, as Dr. S. Clarke has well stated it, follows from his 
intelligence ; for “intelligence without liberty, is really, in respect of any 
power, excellence, or perfection, no intelligence at all. It is indeed « 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 405 


consciousness, but it is merely a paSsive one; a consciousness, not of 
acting, but purely of being acted upon. Without liberty nothing can, 
in any tolerable propriety of speech, be said to be an agent, or causo 
of any thing. For to act necessarily, is really and properly not to act 
at all, but only to be acted upon. 

“‘ If the Supreme Cause is not a being endued with liberty and choice, 
but a mere necessary agent, whose actions are all as absolutely and 
naturally necessary as his existence; then it will follow, that nothing 
which is not, could possibly have been ; and that nothing which is, could 
possibly not have been; and that no mode or circumstance of the exist- 
ence of any thing could possibly have been in any respect otherwise than 
it now actually is. All which being evidently most false and absurd, it 
follows on the contrary, that the Supreme Cause is not a mere neces- 
sary agent, but a being endued with liberty and choice.” 

It is true, that God cannot do evil. “It is impossible for him to lie ™ 
But “this is a necessity, not of nature and fate, but of fitness and wis- 
dom ; a necessity, consistent with the greatest freedom and most perfect 
choice. For the only foundation of this necessity, is such an unalterable 
rectitude of will, and perfection of wisdom, as makes it impossible for a 
wise being to resolve to act foolishly ; or for a nature infinitely good, to 
choose to do that which is evil.” 

Of the wispom of God, it is here necessary to say little, because 
many instances of it in the application of knowledge to accomplish such 
ends as were worthy of himself and requisite for the revelation of his 
glory to his creatures, have been given in the proofs of an intelligent 
and designing cause, with which the world abounds. On this, as well 
as on the other attributes, the Scriptures dwell with an interesting com- 
placency, and lead us to the contemplation of an unbounded variety of 
instances in which this perfection of God has been manifested to men. 
He is “the only wise God ;” and as to his works, “in wisdom hast thou 
made them all.” Every thing has been done by nice and delicate ad- 
justment, by number, weight, and measure. ‘“ He seeth under the whole 
heaven, to make the weight for the winds, to weagh the waters by mea- 
sure, to make a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the 
thunder.” Whole volumes have been written on this amazing subject 
“the Wisdom of God in the Creation,” and it is still unexhausted. 
Every research into nature, every discovery as to the laws by which 
material things are combined, decomposed, and transformed, throws 
new light upon the simplicity of the elements, which are the subjects of 
this ceaseless operation of Divine power, and the exquisite skill, and 
unbounded compass of the intelligence which directs it. ‘The vast body 
of facts which natural philosophy has collected with so much laudable 
labour, and the store of which is constantly increasing, is a commentary 
on the words of insviration, ever enlarging, and which will continue to 


466 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTRSS, [PART 


enlarge as long as men remain on earth to pursue such inquiries; “he 
doeth great things past finding out, and wonders without number.” ‘Lo 
these are parts of his ways, but how little a portion is heard of him !” 
The excellent books which have been written with the express design 
to illustrate the wisdom of God, and to exhibit the final causes of the 
(reation, and preservation of the innumerable creatures with which ve 
ure surrounded, must be referred to on so copious a subject, (1) and a 
few general remarks must suffice. 

The first character of wisdom is to act for worthy ends. To act with 
design is a sufficient character of intelligence ; but wisdom is the fit and 
proper exercise of the understanding ; and though we are not adequate 
judges of what it is fit and proper for God to do in every case, yet for 
many of his acts the reasons are at least partially given in his own word, 
and they command at once our adoration and gratitude, as worthy of 
himself and benevolent to us. The reason of the creation of the world 
was the manifestation of the perfections of God to the rational creatures 
designed to inhabit it, and to confer on them, remaining innocent, a 
felicity equal to their largest capacity. The end was important, and 
the means by which it was appointed to be accomplished evidently fit. 
To be was itself made a source of satisfaction. God was announced to 
man as his Maker, Lord, and Friend, by revelation; but invisible him- 
self, every object was fitted to make him present to the mind of his 
creature, and to be a remembrancer of his power, glory, and care. 
The heavens “declared his glory ;” the fruitful earth “his goodness.” 
The understanding of man was called into exercise by the number and 
variety, and the curious structure of the works of God; pleasures of 
taste were formed by their sublimity, beauty, and harmony. ‘“ Day 
unto day uttered speech, night unto night taught knowledge ;” and God 
in his law, and in his creative munificence and preserving care, was 
thus ever placed before his creature, arrayed in the full splendour of his 
natural and moral attributes, the object of awe and love, of trust and of 
submission. ‘The great moral end of the creation of man, and of his 
residence in the world, and the means by which it was accomplished, 
were, therefore, displays of the Divine wisdom. 

It is another mark of wisdom when the process by which any work is 
accomplished is simple, and many effects are produced from one or a 
f:w elements. ‘ When every several effect has a particular separate 
cause, this gives no pleasure to the spectator, as not discovering con- 
trivance; but that work is beheld with admiration and delight as the result 


(1) Ray’s ‘‘ Wisdom of God.”—Derham’s Astro and Physico-Theology.—Paley’s 
Nat. Theol.—Sturm’s Reflections.—Kirby and Spence’s En.omology; and, though 
not written with any such design, St. Pierre’s ‘Studies of Nature” open to the 
niind that can supply the pious sentiments which the author unfortunately war.ted. 
many striking instances of the wisdom and benevolence of God. 


SECOND. } TILEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 407 


of deep counsel, ‘which is complicated in its parts, and yet simple in its 
Jperation, when a great variety of ‘effects are seen to arise from one 
principle operating uniformly.” (Abernethy on Attributes.) ‘This is the 
character of the works of God. From one material substance, (2) pos- 
sessing the same essential properties, all the visible beings which sur. 
round us are made ; the granite rock, and the central ail-pervading sun ; 
the moveless clod, the rapid lightning, and the transparent air. Gravt- 
tation unites the atoms which compose the world, combines the planets 
into one system, governs the regularity of their motions, and yet vast as 
is its power, and all-pervading as its influence, it submits to an infinite 
number of modifications, which allow of the motion of individual bodies ; 
and it gives place to even contrary forces, which vet it controls and 
regulates. One aci of Divine power in giving a certain inclination to 
the earth’s axis, produced the effect of the vicissitude of seasons, gave 
laws to its temperature, and covered it with increased variety of pro- 
ductions. ‘lo the composition, anda few simple laws impressed upon 
light, every object owes its colour, and the heavens and the earth are 
invested with beauty. A combination of earth, water, and the gasses 
of the atmosphere, forms the strength and majesty of the oak, the grace 
and beauty, and odour of the rose; and from the principle of evapora- 
tion, are formed clouds which “ drop fatness,” dews which refresh the 
languid fields, springs and rivers that make the valleys, through which 
they flow, ‘“Jaugh and sing.” 

Variety of equally perfect operation is a character of wisdom. In the 
works of God the variety is endless, and shows the wisdom from which 
they spring to be infinite. Of that mind in which all the zdeas after which 
the innumerable objects composing the universe must have had a pre- 
vious and distinct existence, because after that pattern they were made; 
and not only the ideas of the things themselves, but of every part of 
which they are composed; of the place which every particle in their 
composition should fill, and the part it should act, we can have no ade- 
quate conception. ‘The thought is overwhelming. ‘This variety is too 
obvious to be dwelt upon ; yet a few of its nicer shades may be adverted 
to, as showing, so to speak, the infinite resources, and the endlessly 
diversified conceptions of the Creator. “ O Lord, how manifold are thy 
works!” All the three kingdoms of nature pour forth the riches of 
variety. The varied forms of crystalization and composition in mznerals ; 
the colours, forms, and qualities of vegetables ; the kinds and properties, 
and habits of animals. ‘The gradations from one class of beings to ano- 
ther from unformed to organic, from dead to living, from mechanic 
sensitiveness to sensation, from dull to active sense, from sluggishness 


(2) ‘A few undecompounded bodies, which may perhaps ultimately be resolved 
mto still fewer elements, or which may be diiferent forms of the same material, 
constitute the whole of our tangible universe of things.” (Davy’s Chymistry.) 


408 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. . [PART 


to motion; from creeping to flying, from sensation to intellect, from 
mstinct to reason, (3) from mortal to immortality, from man to angel, 
from angel to seraph. Between similitude and total unlikeness variety 
has a boundless range ; but its delicacy of touch, so to speak, is shown 
in the narrower field that lies between similarity and entire resemblance, 
of which the works of God present so many curious examples. No two 
things appear exactly alike. when even of the same kind. Plants of the 
same species, the leaves and flowers of the same plant, have all their 
varieties. Animals of the same kind have their individual character. 
Any two blades of grass,-or particles of sand, shall show a marked 
difference when carefully compared. The wisdom of this appears 
more strongly marked when we consider that important ends, both intel. 
lectual and practical, often depend upon it. The resemblances of various 
natural things in greater or less degree, become the means of acquiring 
a knowledge of them with greater ease, because it is made the basis of 
their arrangement into kinds and sorts, without which the human memory 
would fail, and the understanding be confused. The differences in things 
are as important as their resemblances. This is strikingly illustrated in 
the domestic animals and in men. If the individuals of the former did 
not differ, no property could be claimed in them, or when lost they could 
not be recovered. The countenance of one human individual differs 
from all the rest of his species; his voice and his manner have the same 
variety. This is not only an illustration of the resources of creative 
power and wisdom ; but of design and intention to secure a practical end. 
Parents, children, and friends, could not otherwise be distinguished, not 
the criminal from*the innocent. No felon could be identified by his 
accuser, and the courts of judgment would be obstructed, and often ren- 
dered of no avail for the protection of life and property. 

To variety of kind and form, we may add variety of magnitude. In 
the works of God, we have the extremes, and those extremes filled up 
in perfect gradation from magnificence to minuteness. We adore the 
mighty sweep of that power which scooped out the bed of the fathom- 
less ocean, moulded the mountains, and filled space with innumerable 
worlds ; but the same hand formed the animalcule, which requires the 


(3) It is not intended here to countenance the opinion that the difference be. 
tween the highest instinct and the lowest reason, is not great. It is as great as 
the difference between an accountable and an unaccountable nature ; between « 
being nder a law of force, and a law of moral obligation and motive; between 
a nature limited in its capacity of improvement, and one whose capabilities are 
unlimited. ‘‘'The rash hypothesis, that the negro is the connecting link between 
the white man and the ape, took its rise from the arbitrary classification ef Lin. 
neeus, which associates man and the ape in the same order. The more natural 
arrangement of later systems separate them into the bimanous and quadrumanus o1- 
ders. If this classification had not been followed, it would not have occurred to the 
most fanciful mind to find in the negro an intermediate link. (PritcHarp on Man.\ 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 409 


strongest magnifying power of optical instruments to make it visible 
In that tov the work is perfect. We perceive matter in its most delicaty 
organization, bones, sinews, tendons, muscles, arteries, veins, the pulse 
of the heart, and the heaving of the lungs. The workmanship is as 
complete in the smallest as in the most massive of the works of God. 

The connection and dependence of the works of God are as wonderful 
as their variety. Every thing fills its place, not by accident, but by 
jJesign ; wise regulation runs through the whole, and shows that that 
whole is the work of one, and of one alone. The meanest weed which 
grows, stands in intimate connection with the mighty universe itself. It 
depends upon the atmosphere for moisture, which atmosphere supposes 
an ocean, clouds, winds, gravitation ; it depends upon the sun for colour, 
and, essentially, for its required degree of temperature. This supposes 
the revolution of the earth, and the adjustment of the whole planetary sys- 
tem. oo near the sun, it would be burned up; too far from it, it would 
be chilled. What union of extremes is here,—the grass of the earth, 
“which to-day is, and to-morrow Is cast into the oven,” with the stupend- 
ous powers of nature, the most glorious works of the right hand of God! 

So clearly does wisdom display itself, in the adoption of means to 
ends in the visible world, that there are comparatively few of the 
objects which surround us, and few of their qualities, the use of which 
isnot apparent. In this particular, the degree in which the Creator has 
been pleased to manifest his wisdom is remarkably impressive. 

‘‘ Among all the properties of things, we discover no inutility, no 
superfluity. Voluntary motion is denied to the vegetable creation, 
because mechanical motion answers the purpose. This raises, in some 
plants, a defence against the wind, expands others toward the sun, 
inclines them to the support they require, and diffuses their seed. If 
we ascend higher toward irrational animals, we find them possessed of 
powers exactly suited to the rank they hold in the scale of existence. 

«The oyster is fixed to his rock; the herring traverses a vast extent 
of ocean. But the powers of the oyster are not deficient; he opens 
his shell for nourishment, and closes it at the approach of an enemy. 
Nor are those of the herring superfluous; he secures and supports - 
himself in the frozen seas, and commits his spawn in the summer to the 
more genial influence of warmer climates. The strength and ferocity 
of beasts of prey are required by the mode of subsistence allotted to 
them. Ifthe ant has peculiar sagacity, it is but a compensation for its 
weakness ; if the bee is remarkable for its foresight, that foresight is 
rendered necessary by the short duration of its harvest. Nothing can 
be more various than the powers allowed to animals, each in their order 
yet it will be found, that all these powers, which make the study of 
nature so endless and so interesting, suffice to their necessities and ne 
more.” (Sumner’s Records of Creation.) 


410 THEOLOGICAL INSTILUTES. - (PART 


“ }!qually conspicuous is the wisdom of God in the government of 
nations, of states, and of kingdoms: yea, rather more conspicuous: if 
infinite can be allowed to admit of any degrees. For the whole inant- 
mate creation, being totally passive and inert, can make no opposition 
to his will. ‘Therefore, in the natural world all things roll on in an even 
uninterrupted course. But it is far otherwise in the moral werld. 
Here evil men and evil spirits continually oppose the Divine wall, and 
create numberless irregularities. Here, therefore, is full scope for the 
exercise of all the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, in 
sounteracting all the wickedness and folly of men, and all the subtlety 
ef Satan, to carry on his own glorious design, the salvation of lost man- 
sind. Indeed, were he to do this by an absolute decree, and by his own 
irresistible power, it would imply no wisdom at all. But his wisdom is 
shown, by saving man in such a manner as not to destroy his nature, 
nor to take away the liberty which he has given him.” (Wesley’s 
Sermons.) 

But in the means by which offending men are reconciled to God, the 
inspired writers of the New Testament peculiarly glory as the most 
eminent manifestations of the wisdom of God. 

“ For the wonderful work of redemption the apostle gives us this note, 
that ‘he hath therein abounded in all wisdom and prudence.’ Herein 
did the perfection of wisdom and prudence shine forth, to reconcile the 
mighty amazing difficulties and seeming contrarieties, real contrarieties 
indeed, if he had not some way intervened, to order the course of things, 
such as the conflict between justice and mercy ;—that the one must be 
satisfied in such a way as the other might be gratified: which could 
never have had its pleasing grateful exercise without being reconciled 
to the former. And that this should be brought about by such an expe- 
dient, that there should be no complaint on the one hand, nor on the 
other. Herein hath the wisdom of a crucified Redeemer, that whereof 
the crucified Redeemer or Saviour was the effected object, triumphed 
over all the imaginations of men, and all the contrivances even of 
devils, by that death of his, by which the devil purposed the last defeat, 
the complete destruction of the whole desigy of his coming into the 
world, even by that very means, it is brought about so as to fill hell 
with horror, and heaven and earth with wonder.” (Howe’s. Posthumous 
Works.) 

« Wisdom in the treasure of its incomprehensible light, devised to save 
inan, without prejudice to the perfections of God, by transferring the 
punishment to a Surety, and thus to punish sin as required by justice, 
and pardon the sinner as desired by mercy.” (Bates’s Harmony.) 


SECOND. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES 411 


CHAPTER VI. 


ATTRIBUTES OF Gov.—Goodness. 


G )opness, when considered as a distinct attribute of God, is not 
taken in the sense of universal rectitude, but signifies benevolence, or a 
disposition t») communicate happiness. From an inward principle of 
good will, God exerts his omnipotence in diffusing happiness through 
ths universe, in all fitting proportion, according to the different capaci- 
ties with which he has endowed his creatures, and according to the 
direction of the most perfect wisdom. “ Thou art good, and doest 
good.—The Father of lights, from whom cometh every good and perfect 
gift.—O praise the Lord! for he is good, and his mercy endureth 
for ever.” 

This view of the Divine character in the Holy Scriptures has in it 
some important peculiarities, too often overlooked, but which give to 
the revelation they make of God, a singular glory. 

Goodness in God is represented as goodness of nature ; as one of his 
essential perfections, and not as an accidental or an occasional affec- 
tion ; and thus he is set infinitely above the gods of the heathen, those 
imaginary creations of the perverted imaginations. of corrupt men, 
whose benevolence was occasional, limited, and apt t. be disturbed 
by contrary passions. 

Such were the best views of pagans; but to usa being of a far dif- 
ferent character is manifested as our Creator and Lord. One of his 
appropriate and distinguisning names, as proclaimed by himself, signi- 
fies “ The gracious One,” and imports goodness in the principle ; and 
another, “ The all-sufficient and all-bountiful pourer forth of all good ;” 
aud expresses goodness in action. Another interesting view of this 
attribute is, that the goodness of God is efficient and inexhaustible ; it 
reaches every fit case, it supplies all possible want ; and “ endureth for 
ever.” Hence the Talmudists explain iw Suappar in Gen. xvii, 1, 
by “in @ternum sufficiens sum,” | am the eternally all-sufficient. Like 
his emblem, the sun, which sheds his rays upon the surrounding worlds, 
and enlightens and cherishes the whole creation without being dimi- 
nished in splendour, he imparts without being exhausted, and, ever 
giving, has yet infinitely more to give. 

4 third and equally important representation 1s, that he takes plea- 
sure in the exercise of benevolence; that “ he delights in mercy.” It 
is not wrung from him with reluctance ; it is not stintedly measured out, 
it is not coldly imparted. God saw the works he had made, that « they 
were good,” with an evident gratification and delight in what he had 


imparted to a world “ full cf his goodness,” and into which sin and 


4i2 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


misery had not entered. ‘He is rich to all that call upon him ;—he 
giveth liberally and upbraideth not ;—exceeding abundantly above all 
that we can ask or think.” It is under these views, that the Scriptures 
afford so much encouragement to prayer aud lay so strong a ground 
for that absolute ¢rust in God, which they enjoin as one of our highest 
duties, as it is the source of our greatest comfort. 

Another illustration of the Divine goodness, and which is also pecu- 
liar to the Scriptures, is, that nothing, if capable of happiness, comes 
immediately from his forming hands without being placed in circum- 
stances of positive felicity. By heathens, acquainted only with a state 
of things in which much misery is suffered, this view of the Divine 
goodness could not be taken. ‘They could not but suppose either many 
gods, some benevolent; and others, and the greater number, of an 
opposite character; or one, in whose nature no small proportion of 
malevolence was intermixed with milder sentiments. The Scriptures, 
on the contrary, represent misery as brought into the world by the fault 
of creatures; and that otherwise it had never entered. When God 
made the world, he made it good; when he made man, he made him 
happy, with power to remain so. He sows good seed in his field, and 
if tares spring up, “an enemy hath done this.” This is the doctrine of 
inspiration. Finally, the Scripiures, upon this lapse of man, and the 
introduction of natural and moral evil, represent God as establishing an 
order of perfectly sufficient means to remedy both. One of his names 
is therefore 5x1}, Gort, “the Redeemer,” and another, 7312, Bonan, 
“the Restorer.” ‘The means by which he justifies these titles, display 
his goodness with such peculiar eminence, that they are called “the 
riches of his grace,” and sometimes “the riches of his glory.” By the 
incarnation and sacrificial death of the Son of God, he became the 
“GourL,” the kinsman, and ‘“ Redeemer” of mankind; he bought back 
and “restored” the forfeited inheritance of happiness, present and eter- 
nal, into the human family, and placed it again within the reach of 
every human being. In anticipation of this propitiation, the first 
offender was forgiven and raised to eternal life, and the same mercy 
has been promised to all his descendants. No man perishes finally but 
by his own refusal of the mercy of his God. And though the restora- 
ion of individuals is not at once followed by the removal of the natural 
evils of pain, death, &c; for had the whole race of man accepted the 
offered grace, they would not, in this present state, have been removed ; 
yet beyond a short life on earth these evils are not extended, and, even 
in this life, they are made the means of moral ends, tending to a higher 
moral perfection, and greater happiness in another. 

Such are the views of the Divine goodness as unfolded in the Scrip 
tures; views of the utmost importance in an inquiry into the proofs of 
this «attribute of the Divine nature, which are afforded by the actua 


6ECOND.| THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 4i3 


circumstances of the world. Independent of their aid, no proper esti. 
nate can be taken of the sum of evil, which actually exists; nor of its 
Jearing upon the Divine character. Qn these subjects there have been 
conflicting opinions ; and the principal reason has been, that many per- 
sons on both sides, those who have impugned the goodness of God, and 
those who have defended it against objections taken from the existence 
of evil, have too often made the question a subject of pure “ natural 
theology,” and have therefore necessarily formed their conclusions on a 
partial and most defective view of the case. This is not indeed a sub. 
ject for natural theology. It is absurd to make it so; and the best 
writers have either been pressed with the insuperable difficulties which 
have arisen from excluding the light which revelation throws upon the 
state of man in this world, and his connection with another; or, like 
Paley, they have burst the self-inflicted restraints, and confessed “ that 
when we let in religious considerations, we let in light upon the difficul 
ties of nature.” 

With respect to the illustrations of the Divine goodness which are 
presented in the natural and moral world, there are extremes of 
opinion on both sides. ‘The views of some are too gloomy, and shut 
out much of the evidences of the Divine benignity : others embrace a 
system of Optimism, and exclude, on the other hand, the manifestations 
of the Divine justice and the retributive character of the universal 
Governor. The Scriptures enable us to adjust these extremes, and to 
give to God the glory of an absolute goodness, without limiting its ten 
derness by severity, or diminishing its majesty by weakness. 

The dark side of the actual state of the world and of man, its inha- 
bitant, has often, for insidious purposes, been very deeply shadowed.— 
The facts alleged may indeed be generally admitted. The globe, as 
the residence of man, has its inconveniencies and positive evils; its 
variable, and often pernicious climates; its earthquakes, volcanoes, 
tempests, and inundations ; its sterility in some places, which wears 
down man with labour; its exuberance of vegetable and animal life in 
others, which generates disease or gives birth to annoying and destruc- 
tive animals. The diseases of the human race; their short life and 
painful dissolution ; their general poverty ; their universal sufferings and 
cares ; the distractions of civil society ; oppressions, frauds, and wrongs ; 
nust all be acknowledged. ‘To these may be added the sufferings and 
death of animals, and the universal war carried on between different 
creatures throughout the earth. This enumeration of evils might, 
indeed, be greatly enlarged without exaggeration. 

But this is not the only view to be taken. It must be combined with 
others equally obvious ; there are lights as well as shadows in the scene, 
and the darkest masses which it presents are mingled with bright and 
joyous colours. ; 


414 THEOLOGICAL INETITU'TES, . |PART 


For, as Paley has observed, «In a vast plurality of instances, ir 
which contrivance is perceived, the design of the contrivance is 
beneficral. 

‘When God created the human species, either he wished their hap- 
piness, or he wished their misery, or he was indifferent and unconcerned 
about either. 

“If he had wished our misery, he might have made sure of his pur- 
pose, by forming our senses to be so many sores and pains to us, as they 
are now instruments of gratification and enjoyment: or by placmg us 
amidst objects so ill suited to our perceptions as to have continually 
offended us, instead of ministering to our refreshment and delight. He 
might have made, for example, every thing we tasted, bitter ; every thing 
we saw, loathsome; every thing we touched, a sting; every smell, a 
stench ; and every sound, a discord. 

“If he had been indifferent about our happiness or misery, we must 
impute to our good fortune, (as all design by this supposition is excluded,) 
both the capacity of our senses to receive pleasure, and the supply ol 
external objects fitted to produce it. 

“ But either of these, and still more both of them, being too much te 
be attributed to accident, nothing remains but the first supposition, that 
God, when he created the human species, wished their happiness ; and 
made for them the provision which he has made, with that view and for 
that purpose. 

“The same argument may be proposed in different terms, thus :— 
Contrivance proves design; and the predominant tendency of the con. 
trivance indicates the disposition of the designer. The world abounds 
with contrivances; and all the contrivances which we are acquainted 
with, are directed to beneficial purposes. Evil no doubt exists, but 
is never, that we can perceive, the object of contrivance. Teeth are 
contrived to eat, not to ache; their aching now and then is incidental to 
the contrivance, perhaps inseparable from it; or even, if you will, let it 
be called a defect in the contrivance ; but it is not the object of it.— 
This is a distinction which well deserves to be attended to. In 
describing implements of hushandry, you would hardly say of the sickle, 
that it is made to cut the reaper’s hand, though, from the construction 
of the instrument, and the manner of using it, this mischief often follow ;. 
But if you had occasion to describe instruments of torture or execution, 
this engine, you would say, is to extend the sinews; this to dislocate 
te joints; this to break the bones ; this to scorch the soles of the feet. 
Here pain and misery are the very objects of the contrivance. Now 
nothing of this sort is to be found in the works of nature. We never 
discover a train of contrivance to bring about an evil purpose. Ne 
anatomist ever discovered a system of organization calculated to pro. 
duce pain and disease ; or, in explaining the ‘parts of the human body 


\ 
SECOND.) THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 415 


ever said, this is to irritate; this to inflame ; this duct is to convey the 
gravel to the kidneys; this gland to secrete the humour which forms 
che gout. If by chance he come at a part of which he knows not the 
use, the most he can say is, that if is useless: no one ever suspects 
that it is put there to incommode, to annoy, or to torment.” (JVatural 
Theology.) 

The chief exceptions to this are those of venomous animals, and ot 
anmals preying upon one another ; on the first of which it has been 
remarked, not only that the number of venomous creatures is few, but 
that “the animal itself being regarded. the faculty complained of is 
good ; being conducive, in all cases, to the defence of the animal ; in 
some cases, to the subduing of its prey; and in some probably to the 
killing of it, when caught, by a mortal wound inflicted in the passage to 
the stomach, which may be no less merciful to the victim, than salutary 
to the devourer. In the viper, for instance, the poisonous fang may do 
that which, in other animals of prey, is done by the crush of the teeth. 
Frogs and mice might be swallowed alive without it. 

“The second case, namely, that of animals devouring one another, 
furnishes a consideration of much larger extent. To judge whether, as 
a general provision, this can be deemed an evil, even so far as we under- 
stand its consequences, which probably is a partial understanding, the 
following reflections are fit to be attended to :— 

“1. Immortality upon this earth is out of the question. Without death 
vhere could be no generation, no parental relation, that is, as things are 
constituted, no animal happiness. The particular duration of life, 
assigned to different animals, can form no part of the objection ; because 
whatever that duration be, while it remains finite and limited, it may 
always be asked, why is it no longer? The natural age of different 
animals varies from a single day to a century of years. No account 
can be given of this; nor could any be given, whatever other proportion 
of life had obtained among them. 

“The term, then, of life in different animals, being the same as it Is, 
he question is, what mode of taking it away is the best even for the 
animal itself. 

«« N sw, according to the established order of nature, (which we must 
suppose to prevail, or we cannot reason at all upon the subject,) the 
three methods by which life is usually put an end to, are acute diseases, 
decay, and violence. The simple and natural life of brutes is not often 
visited by acute distempers ; nor could it be deemed an improvement 
of their lot if they were. Let it be considered, therefore, in what a 
condition of suffering and misery a brute animal is placed, which is 
eft to perish by decay. In human sickness or infirmity, there is the 
assistance of man’s rational fellow creatures, if not to alleviate hrs 
pains, at least to minister to his necessities, and to supply the place of his 


416 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


own activity. A brute, in his wild and natural state, aoes every thing 
for himself. When his strength, therefore, or his speed, or his limbs, 
or his senses fail him, he is delivered over either to absolute famine, or 
to the protracted wretchedness of a life slowly wasted by scarcity of 
food. Is it then to see the world filled with drooping, superannuated, 
half-starved, helpless, and unhelped animals, that you would alter the 
present system of pursuit and prey ? 

*©2, This system is also to them the spring of motion and activity cn 
both sides. The pursuit of its prey forms the employment, and appears 
to constitute the pleasure, of a considerable part of the animal crea- 
tion. The using of the means of defence or flight, or precaution, 
forms also the business of another part. And even of this Jatter tribe 
we have no reason to suppose that their happiness is much molested by 
their fears. Their danger exists continually ; and in some cases they 
seem to be so far sensible of it as to provide in the best manner they 
can against it: but it is only when the attack is actually made upon 
them that they appear to suffer from it. ‘To contemplate the insecurity 
of their condition with anxiety and dread, requires a degree of reflec. 
tion, which (happily for themselves) they do not possess. A hare, not- 
withstanding the number of its dangers and its enemies, is as playful an 
animal as any other.” 

It is to be observed, that as to animals, there is still much happiness 

“The air, the earth, the water, teem with delighted existence. In 2 
spring noon or a summer evening, on whichever side I turn my eyes, my- 
riads of happy beings crowd upon my view. ‘'The insect youth are on the 
wing.’ Swarms of new-born flies are trying their pinions in the air. 
Their sportive motions, their wanton mazes, their gratuitous activity, 
their continual change of place without use or purpose, testify their joy and 
the exultation which they feel in their lately-discovered faculties. A bee 
among the flowers, in spring, is one of the cheerfullest objects that can be 
looked upon. Its life appears to be all enjoyment; so busy and so 
pleased ; yet it is only a specimen of insect life, with which, by reason 
of the animal being half domesticated, we happen to be better acquainted 
than we are with that of others. The whole winged insect tribe it is 
probable, are equally intent upon their proper employments, and, under 
every variety of constitution, gratified, and perhaps equally gratified, by 
the offices which the author of their nature has assigned to them. Put 
the atmosphere is not the only scene of enjoyment for the insect race. 
Plants are covered with aphides, greedily sucking their juices, and con. 
stantly, as it should seem, in the act of sucking. It cannot be doubted 
vut that this is a state of gratification. What else should tix them so 
close to the operation, and so long? Other species are running about 
with an alacrity in their motions which carries with it every mark of 
pleasure. Large patches of ground are sometimes half covered with 


SECOND, ] 4 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 417 


these brisk and sprightly natures. If we look to what the waters pro. 
duce, shoals of the fry of fish frequent the margins of rivers, of lakes, 
and of the sea itself. ‘These are so happy that they know not what to 
do with themselves. Their attitudes, their vivacity, their leaps out of 
the water, their frolics in it, (which I have noticed a thousand times with 
equal attention and amusement,) all conduce to show their excess of 
spirits, and are simply the effects of that excess. 

“ At this moment, in every given moment of time, how many myriads of 
animals are eating their food, gratifying their appetites, ruminating in their 
holes, accomplishing their wishes, pursuing their pleasures, taking their 
pastimes! In each individual how many things must go right for it to be 
at ease; yet how large a pruportion out of every species are so in every 
assignable instant! Throughout the whole of life, as it is diffused in 
nature, and as far as we are acquainted with it, looking to the average 
of sensations, the piurality and the preponderancy is in favour of 
happiness by a vast excess. In our own species, in which perhaps the 
assertion may be more questionable than in any other, the prepollency 
of good over evil, of health for example, and ease, over pain and distress, 
is evinced by the very notice which calamities excite. What inquiries 
does the sickness of our friends produce! What conversation their mis- 
fortunes! This shows that the common course of things is in favour of 
happiness ; that happiness is the rule, misery the exception. Were the 
order reversed, our attention would be called to examples of health and 
competency instead of disease and want.” (Paley’s Natural Theology.) 

Various alleviations of positive evils, and their being connected with 
beneficial ends, are also to be taken into consideration. Pain teaches 
vigilance and caution, and renders its remission in a state of health a 
source of higher enjoyment. » For numerous diseases also, remedies are, 
by the providence of God, and his blessing upon the researches of man, 
established. The process of mortal diseases has the effect of mitigating 
the natural horror we have of death. Sorrows and separations are 
smooth d by time. The necessity of labour obliges us to occupy time 
usefully , which is both a source of enjoyment, and the means of prevent- 
ing much mischief in a world of corrupt and ill-inclined men ; and fami. 
liarity and habit render many circumstances and inconveniences tolerable, 
which, at first sight, we conceive to be necessarily the sources of wretch. 
edness. In all this, there is surely an ample proof and an adorable 
display of the Divine benevolence. 

In considering the actual existence of evils in the world, as it affects 
the question of the goodness of God, we must also make a distinction 
between those evils which are self inflicted, and those which are inevit- 
able. The question of the reconcilableness of the permission of evil 
with the goodness of God, will be distinctly considered ; but waiving 


this for the moment, nothing can be more obvious than that man him. 
Vo. I. Oy 


418 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. ; [PART 


self is chargeable with by far the largest share of the miseries of the 
present life, and that they draw no cloud over the splendour of universal 
goodness. View men collectively. Sin, asa ruling habit, is not neces. 
sary. ‘The means of repressing its inward motions, and restraining its 
outward acts, are or have been furnished to all mankind; and yet were 
all those miseries which are the effects of voluntary vice removed, how 
little comparatively would remain to be complained of in the world! 
Oppressive governments, private wrongs, wars, and all their consequent 
evils, would disappear. Peace, security, and industry, would cover the 
earth with fruits, in sufficient abundance for all ; and for accidental wants, 
the helpless, sick, and aged, would find a prompt supply in the charity of 
others. Regulated passions, and an approving conscience would create 
benevolent tempers, and these would displace inward disquiet with inward 
peace. Disease would remain, accidents to life and limb occur, death 
would ensue ; but diseases would in consequence of temperance be less 
frequent and formidable, men would ordinarily attain a peaceful age, 
and sink into the grave by silent decay. Beside the removal of so many 
evils, how greatly would the sum of positive happiness be increased! 
Intellectual improvement would yield the pleasures of knowledge ; arts 
would multiply the comforts, and mitigate many of the most wasting 
toils of life; general benevolence would unite men in warm affections 
and friendships, productive of innumerable reciprocal offices of kind- 
ness ; piety would crown all with the pleasures of devotion, the removal 
of the fear of death, and the hope of a still better state of being. All 
this is possible. If itis not actual, it is the fault of the human race, not 
of their Maker and Redeemer ; and his goodness is not, therefore, to be 
questioned, because they are perverse. 

But let the world remain as it is, with all its self-inflicted evils, and let 
the case of an individual only be considered, with reference to the number 
of existing evils, from which, by the merciful provision of the grace of God 
he may entirely escape, and of those which it is put into his power to 
mitigate, and even to convert to his benefit. It cannot be doubted as to 
any individual around us, but that he may escape from the practice and the 
consequence of every kind of vice, and experience the renewing effects of 
Christianity—that he may be justified by faith, adopted into the family of 
God, receive the hallowing influences of the Holy Ghost, and henceforth 
walk, not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Why do men who profess 
to believe in Christianity, when employed in writing systems of “ Natural 
Theology,” which oblige them to reason on the Divine goodness, and to 
meet objections to it, forget this, or transfer to some other branch of 
theology what is so vital to their own argument ? Here the benevolence of 
God to man comes forth in all its brightness, and throws its illustrations 
upon his dealings with man. What, in this case, would be the quantum of 
evil left to be suffered by this individual, morally so restored and so 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 41? 


‘egenerated ? No evils, which are the consequences of personal vice, 
often a long and fearful train. No inward disquiet, the effect of guilty 
or foolish passions, another pregnant source of misery. No restless 
pining of spirit after an unknown good, creating a distaste to present 
innocent enjoyments—he has found that good in the favour and friend- 
ghip of God. No discontent with the allotments of Providence—he has 
been taught a peaceful submission. No irritable restlessness under his 
sufferings and sorrows,—“ in patience he possesses his soul.” No fear- 
ful apprehension of the future—he knows that there is a guiding eye, 
and a supporting hand above, employed in all his concerns. No torment- 
ing anxiety as to life or death—“he has a lively hope” of an inheritance 
in heaven. What then of evil remains to him but the common afflictions 
of life, all of which he feels, but does not sink under, and which, as they 
exercise, improve his virtues, and by rendering them more exemplary 
and influential to others, are converted into ultimate benefits. Into this 
state any individual may be raised; and what is thus made possible to 
us by Divine goodness is of that attribute an adorable manifestation. 
These views, however, while they remove the weight of any objections 
which may be made to the benevolence of the Divine character, taken * 
from the existence of actual evils in the world, are at as great a distance 
as possible from that theory on this subject which has been denominated 
Optimism. ‘This opinion is, briefly, not that the present system of being 
is the best that might be conceived; but the best which the nature of 
things would admit of. That between not creating at all, and creating 
material, and sentient, and rational beings, as we find them now circum. 
stanced, and with their present qualities, there was no choice. Accord- 
ingly, with respect to natural evils, the Optimists appear to have revived 
the opinion of the oriental and Grecian schools, that matter has in it an 
inherent defect and tendency to disorder, which baffled the skill of the 
great Artificer himself to form it into a perfect world; and that moral 
evil as necessarily follows from finite, and therefore imperfect, natures. 
No imputation, they infer, can be cast upon the Creator, whose good- 
wness, they contend, is abundantly manifest in correcting many of these 
evils by skilful contrivances, and rendering them, in numerous instances, 
the ocvasion of good. Thus the storm, the earthquake, and the volcano, 
in the natural world, though necessary consequences of imperfection in 
the very nature of matter, are rendered by their effects beneficial, in the 
various’ ways which natural philosophy points out ; and thus even moral 
evils are necessary to give birth, and to call into exercise the opposite 
qualities of virtue, which but for them could have no exercise; e. g . if no 
injuries were inflicted, there could be no place for the virtue of forgive- 
ness. ‘To this also is added the doctrine of general laws ; according to 
which, they argue, the universe must be conducted ; but that, however 
well set and constituted general laws may be, they wil] often thwart and 


420 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTYXS, (PART 


cross one another ; and that from thence particular inconvemencies will 
arise. The constitution of things is, however, good on the whole, and 
that is all which can be required. 

The apology tor the Divine goodness afforded by such an hypothesis, 
will not be accepted by those most anxious to defend this attribute from 
Atheistic cavils ; and though it has had its advocates among some whe 
have professed respect for the Scriptures, yet it could never have been 
adopted by them, had they not been too regardless of the light whicl. they 
cast upon these subjects, and been led astray by the vain project of con- 
structing perfect systems of natural religion, and by attempting to unite 
the difficulties which arise out of them, by the aid of unassisted reason. 
The very principle of this hypothesis, that the nature of things did not 
admit of a better world, implies a very unworthy notion of God. It was 
pardonable in the ancient advocates of the eternity of matter, to ascribe 
to it an essential imperfection, and inseparable evil qualities ; but if the 
doctrine of creation in the proper sense be allowed, the omnipotence 
which could bring matter out of nothing, was just as able to invest it with 
good as with evil qualities ; and he who arranged it to produce so much 
- beauty, harmony, security, and benefit, as we actually find in the world, 
could be at no loss to render his work perfect in every respect, and 
needed not the balancings and counteractions of one evil against 
another to effect his benevolent purposes. Accordingly, in fact, we 
find, that when God had finished his work, he pronounced it not merely 
good comparatively ; but ‘‘ very good,” or good absolutely. Nor is it 
true that, in the moral world, vice must necessarily exist in order to 
virtue ; and that if we value the one, we must in the nature of things be 
content to take it with the other. We are told, indeed, that no forgive. 
ness could be exercised by one human being, if znjury were not inflicted 
by another ; no meekness could be displayed, were there no anger; no 
long suffering were there no perverseness, &c. But the fallacy lies in 
separating the acis of virtue, from the principles of virtue. All the 
above mstances may be reduced to one principle of benevolence, which 
may exist in as high a degree, when never called forth by such occa- 
sions ; and express itself in acts quite as explicit, in a state of society 
from which sim is excluded. There are, for instance, according to 
Scripture, beings, ealled angels, who kept their first state, and have 
never sinned. In sucha society as theirs, composed probably of different 
orders of intelligences, some” more advanced in knowledge than others, 
some with higher, and others with lower degrees of perfection, “as 
one star differeth from another star in glory ;” how many exercises 
of humility and condescension; how much kind communication of 
knowledge by some, and meek and grateful reception of it by others; 
how many different ways in which a perfect purity, and a perfect love, 
and a perfect freedom from selfishness may display themselves! When, 


SECOND. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 421 


therefore, the principle of universal benevolence may be conveived tc 
display itself so strikingly, in a sinless state of society, does it need 
injury to call it forth in the visible form of forgiveness ; anger, in the 
form of meekness ; obstinacy, in the form of forbearance? Certainly 
not ; aad it demands no effort of mind to infer, that did such occasions 
exist to call for it, it would be developed, not only in the particular 
modes just named, but in every other. 

In opposition to the view taken by such theorists, we may deny, that 
‘* whatever is, is best.” We can not only conceive of a better state of things 
as possible ; but can show thet the evils which actually exist, whether 
natural or moral, do not exist necessarily. It is, indeed, a proof of the 
Divine goodness to bring good out of evil; to make storms and earth- 
quakes, which are destructive to the few, beneficial to the many ; to 
render the sins of men occasions to try, exercise, and perfect, various 
virtues in the good; but if man had been under an unmixed dispensa- 
tion of mercy, all these ends might obviously have been accomplished, 
independent of the existence of evils, natural or moral, in any degree. 
The true key to the whole subject is furnished by Divine revelation. 
Sin has entered the world. Man is under the displeasure of his Maker. 
Hence we see natural evils, and punitive acts of the Divine administra- 
tion, not because God is not good, but because he is just as well as 
good. But man is not left under condemnation ; through the propitiation 
made for his sins by the sacrifice of Christ, he is a subject of mercy. 
He is under correction, not under unmingled wrath, and hence the dis. 
plays of the Divine benevolence, which the world and the acts of Provi- 
dence every where, and throughout all ages, present ; and in proportion 
as good predominates, kindness triumphs against severity, and the Divine 
character is emblazoned in our sight as one that ‘ delighteth in mercy.” 

To this representation of the actual relations in which the human race 
stand to God, and to no other hypothesis, the state of the world exactly 
answers, and thus affords an obvious and powerful confirmation of the 
doctrine of revelation. This view has been drawn out at length by a 
late ingenious writer, (Gisborne’s Testimony of Natural Philosophy to 
Christianity,) and in many instances, with great felicity of illustration. 
A few extracts will show the course of the argument. ‘The first relates 
t. the convulsions which have been undergone by the globe itself. 

« Suppose a traveller, penetrating into regions placed beyond the sphere 
of his antecedent knowledge, suddenly to find himself on the confines 
of a city lying in ruins. Suppose the desolation, though bearing marks 
of ancient date, to manifest unequivocal proofs that it was not effected 
by the mouldering hand of time, but has been the result of design and of 
violence. Dislocated arches, pendant battlements, interrupted aqueducts, 
‘owers undermined and subverted, while they record the primeval 
strength and magnificence of the structures, proclaim the determined 


422 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. ) jPAR1 


purpose, the persevering exertions, with which force had urged forward 
the work of destruction. Suppose farther, that in surveying the reliques 
which have survived through the silent lapse of ages, the stranger dis- 
covers a present race of inhabitants, who have reared their huts amidst 
the wreck. He inquires the history of the scene before him. He is 
unformed, that the city, once distinguished by splendour, by beauty, by 
every arrangement and provision for the security, the accommodation, 
the happiness of its occupiers, was reduced to iis existing situation by 
the deliberate resolve and act of its own lawful sovereign, the very 
sovereign by whom it had been erected, the emperor of that part of the 
world. ‘Was he a ferocious tyrant ??—‘ No,’ is the universal reply. 
‘He was a monarch pre-eminent for consistency, forbearance, and be. 
nignity..—* Was his judgment blinded, or nfiisled, by erroneous intelli. 
gence as to the plans and proceedings of his subjects ?—‘ He. knew every 
thing but too well. He understood with undeviating accuracy; he 
decided with unimpeachable wisdom.’—‘ The case, then,’ cries the tra- 
veller, ‘is plain: the conclusion is inevitable. Your forefathers assuredly 
were ungrateful rebels; and thus plucked down devastation upon their 
city, themselves, and their posterity.’ 

«The actual appearance of the globe on which we dwell, is in strict 
analogy with the picture of our hypothetical city. 

«The earth, whatever may be the configuration, whatever may have 
been the perturbation or the repose, of its deep and hidden recesses, is, in 
its superior strata, a mass of ruins. It is not of one land, or of one clime, 
that the assertion is made ; but of all lands, but of all climes, but of the 
earth universally. Wherever the steep front of mountains discloses their 
interior construction; wherever native caverns and fissures reveal the 
disposition of the component materials ; wherever the operations of the 
miner have pierced the successive layers. beneath which coal or metal 
is deposite¢ convulsion and disruption and disarrangement are visible. 
Though the smoothness and uniformity which the hand of cultivation 
expands over some portions of the globe, and the shaggy mantle of 
thickets and forests with which nature veils other portions hitherto unre- 
plenished and unsubdued by mankind, combine to obscure the vestiges 
of the shocks which our planet has experienced ; as a fair skin and 
oruamental attire conceal internal fractures and disorganizations in the 
human frame: to the eye of the contemplative enquirer exploring the 
surface of the earth, there is apparent many a scar testifying ancient 
concuss‘on and collision, and laceration ; and many a wound yet unheal. 
ed, and opening into unknown and unfathomable profundity. 

“From this universal scene of confusion in the superior strata of the 
earth, let the student of natural theology turn his thoughts to the gene. 
ral works of God. What are the characteristics in which those works, 
however varied in their kinds, in their magnitudes, and in theix pur 


SECOND.] THEOLGGICAL INSTITUTES. 423 


poses, obviously agree? What are the characteristics by which they 
are all, with manifest intention, imprinted ’—Order and harmony. In 
every mode of animal life, from the human frame down to the atomic 
and unsuspected existences in water, which have been rendered visible 
by the lenses of modern science ; in the vegetable world, from the cedar 
of Lebanon to the hyssop by the wall; from the hyssop by the wall to 
the minutest plant discernible under the microscope: in the crystaliza- 
lions of the mineral kingdom, of its metals, of its salts, of its spars, of 
iis gems: in the revolution of the heavenly bodies, and in the conse- 
quent reciprocations of day, and night, and seasons :—all is regularity. 
In the works of God, order and harmony are the rule; irregularity and 
confusion form the rare exception. Under the Divine government, an 
exception so portentous as that which we have been contemplating, a 
transformation from order and harmony to irregularity and confusion 
involving the integuments of a world, cannot be attributed to any circum- 
stance which, in common language, we term fortuitous. It proclaims 
itself to have been owing to a moral cause; to a moral cause demand- 
ing so vast and extraordinary an effect; a moral cause which cannot 
but be deeply interesting to man, cannot but be closely connected with 
man, the sole being on the face of this globe who is invested with moral 
agency ; the sole being, therefore, on this globe who is subjected to 
moral responsibility ; the sole being on this globe whose moral conduct 
can have had a particle of even indirect influence on the general condi- 
tion of the g'obe which he inhabits.” 

Another instance is supplied from the general deluge. After proving 
from a number of geological facts, that such a phenomenon must have 
occurred, the author observes :— 

“Thus, while the exterior strata of the earth, by recording in charac- 
ters unquestionable and indelible the fact of a primeval and penal deluge, 
attest from age to age the holiness and the justice of God; the form 
and aspect of its surface are, with equal clearness, testifying from gene- 
ration to generation his inherent and not less glorious attribute of mercy. 
For they prove that the very deluge, in its irruption employed as the 
instrument in his dispensation of vengeance to destroy a guilty world, 
was, in ils recess so regulated by him as to the varying rapidity of its 
su )sidence, so directed by him throughout all its consecutive operations, 
as to prepare the desolated globe for the reception of a restored succes. 
sicn of inhabitants; and so to arrange the surface, as to adapt it in 
every climate for the sustenance of the animals, for the production of 
the trees and plants, and for the growth and commodious cultivation of 
the grain and the fruits, of which man, in that particular region, would 
chiefly stand in need. : 

“During the retirement of the waters, when a barrier of a rocky 
stratum, sufficiently strong for resistance, crossed the line of descent, a 


424 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. | [PART 


lake wou d be in consequence formed. - These memorials of the dominion 
of that element which had recently been so destructive, remain also as 
memorials of the mercy of the Restorer of nature ; and by their own 
living splendours, and by the beauty and the grandeur of their bounda- 
ries, are the most exquisite ornaments of the scenes in which we dwell. 
“ Would you receive and cherish a strong impression of the extent of 
the mercy displayed in the renewal of the face of the earth? Would 
you endeayour to render justice to the subject? Contemplate the num 
ber of the diversified effects on the surface of the globe, which have 
been wrought, arranged, and harmonized by the Divine benignity through 
the agency of the retiring deluge: and combine in your survey of them 
the two connected characteristics, utility and beauty; utility to meet 
the necessities and multiply the comforts of man; beauty graciously 
superadded to cheer his eye and delight his heart, with which the 
general aspect of nature is impressed. Observe the mountains, of every 
form and of every elevation. See them now rising in bold acclivities 
now accumulated in a succession of gracefully sweeping ascents ; now 
towering in rugged precipices ; now rearing above the clouds their spiry 
ninnacles glittering with perpetual snow. View their sides now dark- 
ened with unbounded forests ; now spreading to the sun their ample 
slopes covered with herbage, the summer resorts of the flocks and the 
herds of subjacent regions; now scovped into sheltered concavities ; 
now enclosing within their ranges glens green as the emerald, and 
watered by streams pellucid and sparkling as crystal. Pursue these 
glens as they unite and enlarge themselves; mark their rivulets uniting 
and enlarging themselves also; until the glen becomes a valley, and the 
valley expands into a rich vale or a spacious plain, each varied and 
bounded by hills, and knolls, and gentle uplands, in some parts chiefly 
adapted for pasturage, in others for the plough; each intersected and 
refreshed by rivers flowing onward from country to country, and with 
streams continually augmented by collateral accessions, until they are 
finally lost in the ocean. ‘There new modes of beauty are awaiting the 
beholder; winding shores, bold capes, rugged promontories, deeply in. 
dented bays, harbours penetrating far inland and protected from every 
blast. But in these vast and magnificent features of nature, the gracious 
Author of all things has not exhausted the attractions with which he 
purposed to decorate inanimate objects. He pours forth beauties in 
detail, and with unsparing prodigality of munificence, and for whatever 
ather reas ns, for human gratification also, on the several portions, how- 
ever inconsiderable, of which the larger component parts of the splendid 
whole consist: on the rock, on the fractured stone, on the thicket, on 
the single tree, on the bush, on the mossy bank, on the plant, on the 
flower, on the leaf. Of all these works of his wondrous hand, he is 
continually varying and enhancing the attractions by the diversified 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 425 


modes and accessions of beauty with which he’ invests them, by the 
aiterations of seasons, by the countless and rapid changes of light and 
shade, by the characteristic effecis of the rising, the meridian, the setting 
sun, by the subdued glow of twilight, by the soft radiance of the moon; 
and by the hues, the actions, and the music of the animal tribes with 
which they are peopled.” 

The human frame supplies another illustration :— 

“ Consider the human frame, naked against the elements, instantly 
susceptible of every external impression; relatively weak, unarmed ; 
during infancy totally helpless; helpless again in old age; occupying 
a long period in its progress of growth to its destined size and strength ; 
ungified with swiftness to escape the wild beast of the forest ; incapable, 
when overtaken, of resisting him; requiring daily supplies of food, and 
of beverage, not merely that sense may not be ungratified, not merely 
that vigour may not decline, but that closely impending destruction may 
be delayed. For what state does such a frame appear characteristically 
fitted? For what state does it appear to have been originally designed ? 
For a state of innocence and security; for a paradisiacal state; for a 
state in which all elements were genial, all external impressions in- 
noxious ; a state in which relative strength was unimportant, arms were 
needless ; in which to be helpless was not to be insecure ; in which the 
wild beast of the forest did not exist, or existed without hostility to man; 
a state in which food and beverage were either not precarious, or not 
habitually and speedily indispensable. Represent to yourself man as 
innocent, and in consequent possession of the unclouded favour of his 
God; and then consider whether it be probable, that a frame thus 
adapted to a paradisiacal state, thus designated by characteristical indi- 
cations as originally formed for a paradisiacal state, would have been 
selected for the world in which we live. Turn to the contrary repre. 
sentation ; a representation the accuracy of which we have already 
seen the pupil of natural theology constrained, by other irresistible testi- 
monies which she has produced, to allow: regard man as having for. 
feited, by transgression, the Divine favour, and as placed by his God, 
with a view to ultimate possibilities of mercy and restoration, in a situ. 
ation which, amidst tokens and means of grace, is at prese t to partake 
ofa penal character. For such a situation ; for residence on the exist- 
ing earth as the appointed scene of discipline at once merciful, moral, 
and penal; what frame could be more wisely calculated? What frame 
could be more happily adjusted to receive, and to convey, and to aid, 
at.d to continue the impressions, which if mercy and restoraticn are to 
be attained, must antecedently be wrought into the mind? Is not sucha 
frame, in such a world, a living and a faithful witness, a constant and an 
energetic remembrancer, to natural reason, that man was created holy ; 
that he fell from obedience: that his existence was continued for purposes 


426 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


of mercy und restoration ; that he is placed in his earthly abode under a 
dispensation bearing the combined marks of attainable grace, and of: 
penal discipline? Is not such a frame, in such a world, a preparation for 
the reception, and a cellateral evidence to the truth, of Christianity ?” 

The occupations of man furnish other instances :— 

* One of his most general and most prominent occupations will neces. 
éarily be the cultivation of the ground. As the products drawn from 
the soil form the basis, not only of human subsistence, but of the wealth 
which expands itself in the external comforts and ornaments of social 
hfe ; we should expect that, under a dispensation comprehending means 
and purposes of mercy, the rewards of agriculture would be found among 
the least uncertain and the most liberal of the recompenses, which Pro- 
videuce holds forth to exertion. Experience confirms the expectation, 
and attesis that man is not rejected of his Creator. Yet how great, how 
continual is the toil annexed to the effective culture of the earth! How 
constant the anxiety, lest redundant moisture should corrupt the seed 
under the clod; or grubs and worms gnaw the root of the rising plant ; 
or reptiles and insects devour the blade; or mildew blast the stalk; or 
ungenial seasons destroy the harvest! How frequently, from these, and 
other causes, are the unceasing labours, and the promising hopes of the 
husbandman terminated in bitter disappointment! Agriculture wears not, 
in this our planet, the characteristics of an occupation arranged for an 
innocent and a fully favoured race. It displays to the eye of natural 
theology traces of the sentence pronounced on the first cultivator, the 
representative of all who were to succeed: ‘ Cursed is the ground for 
thy sake. ‘Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee. In sor- 
row shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. In the sweat of thy face 
shalt thou eat bread.’ It bears, in its toils and in its solicitudes, plain 
indications that man is a sinner. 

“Observations, in substance corresponding with those which have 
been stated respecting tillage, might be adduced concerning the care of 
flocks and herds. ‘The return for labour in this branch of employment 
is, in the ordinary course of events, sufficient, as in agriculture, both to 
excite and sustain exertion, and to intimate the merciful benignity with 
which the Deity looks upon mankind. But the fatiguing superintend. 
ence, the watchful anxiety, the risks of loss by disease, by casualties, 
by malicious injury and depredation, and, in many countries, by the 
inroads of wild beasts, conspire in their amount to enforce the truth 
which has been inculcated. They inscribe the page of natural theology 
with the Scriptural denunciation: that the labour and the pain assigned 
to man are consequences of transgression. 

“ Another of the principal occupations of man consists in the extrac. 
tion of the mineral contents of the earth, and in the reduction of the 
metals into the states and the forms requisite for use. On ‘he toil, the 


sLECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 427 


irksomeness, and the dangers attendant on these modes of life, it is 
unnecessary to enlarge. They have been discussed ; and have been 
shown to be deeply stamped with a penal character appropriate to a 
fallen and guilty race. 

*¢ Another and a very comprehensive range of employment consists m 
the fabrication of manufactures. These, in correspondence with the 
necessities, the reasonable desires, the self indulgence, the ingenuity, 
the caprices, and the ‘uxury of individuals, are diversified beyond enu- 
meration. But it may be affirmed generally concerning manufactures 
in extensive demand, thai, in common with the occupations which have 
already been examined, they impose a pressure of labour, an amount of 
solicitude, and a risk of disappointment, such as we cannot represent to 
ourselves as probable in the case of beings holy in their nature, and 
thoroughly approved by their God. The tendency also of such manu 
factures is to draw together numerous operators within a small com 
pass; to crowd them into close workshops and inadequate habitations , 
to injure their health by contaminated air, and their morals by conta- 
gious society. 

“ Another line of exertion is constituted by trade, subdivided into its 
two branches, domestic traffic and foreign commerce. Both, at the 
same time that they are permitted in common with the modes of occu- 
pation already named to anticipate, on the whole, by the. appointment of 
Providence, such a recompense as proves adequate to the ordinary ex- 
citement of industry, and to the acquisition of the moderate comforts of 
life ; are marked with the penal impress of toil, anxiety, and disappoint- 
ment. Natural theology still reads the sentence, ‘In ihe sweat of thy 
face, in sorrow, shalt thou eat bread.’ Vigilance is frustrated by the 
carelessness of associates, or profit intercepted by their iniquity. Up- 
rightness in the dealer becomes the prey of fraud in the customer. The 
ship is wrecked on a distant shore, or sinks with the cargo, and with the 
merchant in the ocean.” (Testimony of Nature, gc.) 

Numerous other examples are furnished by the author, and might be 
easily enlarged, so abundant is the evidence; and the whole directly 
connects itself with the subject under consideration. The voluntary 
goodness of God is not impugned by the various evils which exist in the 
worid, for we see them accounted for by the actual corrupt state of man, 
and by a righteous administration, by which goodness must be controlled 
to be an attribute worthy of God. It would otherwise be weakness, 
blind passion, and not a wisely-regulated affection. On the other hand, 
there is clearly no reason for resorting to notions of necessity, and defects 
in the essential nature of created things, to prove that God is good; u1, 
in other words, according to the hypothesis above stated, as good as the 
stubbornness of matter, and the necessity that vice and misery should” 
exist, would allow. His goodness is limited by moral, not by physical 


428 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. | _PART 


reasous, but still, considering the glebe as the residence of a fallen and 
perverse race, that glorious atiribute is heightened in its lustre by this 
very circumstance; it arrays itself before us in all its affecting attributes 
of mercy, pity, long suffering, mitigation, and remission. It is goodness 
poured forth in the richest liberality, whe-e moral order permits its un- 
restraiwed flow; and it is never withheld but where the general benefit 
demands it. Penal acts never go beyond the rigid necessity of the case ; 
ats of mercy rise infinitely above all desert. 

The above observations all suppose moral evil actually in the world, 
and infecting the whole human race ; but the origin of evil requires dis- 
tinct consideration. How did moral evil arise, and how is this circum. 
stance compatible with the Divine goodness? However these questions 
may e answered, it is to be remembered that though the answer should 
leave sume difficulties in full force, they do not press exclusively upon 
the Scriptures. Independent of the Bible, the fact is, that evil exists ; 
and the Theist who admits the existence of a-God of infinite goodness, 
nas as large a share of the difficulty of reconciling facts and principles 
on this subject as the Christian, but with no advantage from that history 
of the introduction of sin into the world which is contained in the writ- 
ings of Moses, and none from those alleviating views which are afforded 
by the doctrine of the redemption of man by Jesus Christ. 

As to the source of evil, the following are the leading opinions which 
have been held. Necessity, arising out of the nature of things; the 
Manichean principle of duality, or the existence of a good and an evil 
Deity ; the doctrine that God is the efficient cause or author of sin; and 
finally, that evil is the result of the abuse of the moral freedom with 
which rational and accountable creatures are endowed. With respect 
to the first, as the necessity meant is independent of God, it refutes itself. 
For if all creatures are under the influence of this necessity, and they 
must be under it if it arise out of the nature of things itself, no virtue 
could now exist: from the moment of creation the deteriorating prin- 
ciple must begin its operation, and g>» on until all good is extinguished. 
Nor could there be any return from vice to virtue, since the nature of © 
things would on that supposition be counteracted, which is impossible. 

The second is scarcely worth notice, since no one now advocates it. 
This heresy, which prevailed in several parts of the Christian world 
from the third to the sixteenth century, seems to have been a modifiva. 
tion of the ancient Magian doctrine superadded to some of the tenets of 
Christianity. Its leading principle was, that our souls were made by 
the good principle, and our bodies by the evil one; these two principles 
being, according to Mant, the founder of the sect, co-eternal and inde. 
pendent of each other. These notions were supposed to afford in easy 
explanation of the origin of evil, and on that account were zealously 
propagated. It was, however, overlooked by the advocates of this 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 429 


scheme, that it left the difficulty without any alleviation at all; for “uw 
is just as repugnant to infinite gooduess to create what it foresaw would 
be spoiled by another, as to create what would be spoiled by the consti- 
tution of its nature.” (King’s Origin of Evil.) 

The dogma which makes God himself the efficient cause, or author 
of sin, is direct blasphemy, and it is one of those culpable extravagances 
into which men are sometimes betrayed by a blind attachment to some 
favourite theory. This notion is found in the writings of some of the 
most unguarded advocates of the Calvinistic hypothesis, though now 
generally abandoned by the writers of that school. A modern defender 
of Calvinism thus puts in his disclaimer, “ God is not the author of sin. 
A Calvinist who says so I regard as Judas, and will have no communion 
with him.” (4) The general abandonment of this notion, so offensive 
and blamable, renders it unnecessary to enter into its refutation. If 
refutation were required it would be found in this, that the first pair who 
sinned were subjected to punishment for, and on account of sin; which 
they could not in justice have been, had not their crime been chargeable 
upon themselves. 

The last opinion, and that which has been generally received by 
theologians, is, that moral evil is the result of a voluntary abuse of the 
freedom of the will in rational and moral agents ; and that, as to the 
human race, the first pair sinned by choice, when the power to have 
remained innocent remained with them. “ Why is there szn in the 
world? Because man was created in the image of God; because he is 


(4) Scott’s Remarks on the Refutation of Calvinism.—Few have been so dar- 
ing, except the grosser Antinomians of ancient and modern times. The elder 
Calvinists, though they often made fearful approaches in their writings to this 
blasphemy, yet did not, openly and directly, charge God with being the author 
of sin. This Arminius, with great candour, acknowledges; but gives them a 
friendly admonition, to renounce a doctrine from which this aspersion upon the 
Divine character may, by a good consequence, be deduced: a caution not uncalled 
for in the present day. ‘Inter omnes blasphemias que Deo impingi possunt, 
omnium est gravissima qua author peccati statuitur Deus: que ipsa non parum 
exaggeratur, si addatur Deum idcirco avthorem esse peccati 4 creatura commissi, 
ut creaturam in wternum exitium, quod illi jam anté citra respectum peccati 
destinaverat, damnaret et deduceret: sic enim fuerit causa injustitie homini, 
ut ipsi eternam miseriam adferre posset. Hane blasphemiam nemo Deo, quem 
bonum concipit, impinget: quare etiam Manichei, pessimi hereticorum, quum 
¢ausam mali bono Deo adscribere vererentur, alium Deum et aliud principium 
statuerunt, cui mali causam deputarent. Qua de causa, nec  Illis Doctoribus 
reformaturum Ecclesiarum jure impingi potest, quod Deum authorem peccati sta- 
tuant exprofesso ; imo verissimum est illos expresse id negare, et illam calumniam 
contra alios egregié confutasse. Attamen fieri potest, ut quis ex ignorantia 
aliquod doceat, ex quo bona consequentia deducatur, Deum per illam doctrinam 
statui authorem peccati. Hoc si fiat, tum quidem istius doctrine professoribus, 
non est impingendum quod Deum authorem peccati faciant, sed tantum monendi 
ut doctrinam istam, unce id bona consequentia deducitur, deserant et abjiciant.” 


‘ 


qrn THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. - [PART 


not mere matter, a clod of earth, a lump of clay, without sense or under- 
standing, but a spirit like his Creator; a being endned not only with 
sense and understanding, but also with a will exerting itself in various 
affections. ‘Io crown all the rest, he was endued with liberty, a power 
of directing his own affections and actions, a capacity of determiring 
himself, or of choosing good and evil. Indeed, had not man been 
endued with this, all the rest would have been of no use. Had he not 
been a free, as well as an intelligent being, his understanding would have 
been as incapable of holiness, or any kind of virtue, as a tree or a block 
of marble. And having this power, a power of choosing good and evil, 
he chose the latter, he chose evil. Thus ‘sin entered into the world.’ ” 
( Wesley’s Sermons.) 

This account unquestionably agrees with the history of the fact of the 
fall and corruption of man. Like every thing else in its kind, he was 
pronounced “ very good;” he was placed under a law of obedience, 
which, if he had not had the power to observe it, would have been ab- 
surd; and that he had a'so the power to violate it, is equally clear from 
the prohibition under which he was laid, and its accompanying penalty. 
The conclusion therefore is, that ‘God made man upright,” with power 
to remain so, and, on the contrary, to sin and fall. 

Nor was this liberty to sin inconsistent with that perfect purity and 
moral perfection with which he was endowed at his creation. Many 
extravagant descriptions have been indulged in by some divines as to 
the intellectual and moral endowments of the nature of the first man, 
which if admitted to the full extent, would render it difficult to conceive 
how he could possibly have fallen by any temptations which his circum. 
stances allowed, or indeed how, in his case, temptation could at all exist. 
His state was high and glorious, but it was still a state not of reward 
but of fal, and his endowments and perfections were therefore suited 
to it. It is, indeed, perhaps going much too far to state, that all createc 
rational beings, being finite, and endowed also with liberty of choice, 
must, under all circumstances, be liable to sin. It is argued by Arch. 
bishop King, that ‘God, though he be omnipotent, cannot make any 
created being absolutely perfect; for whatever is absolutely perfect, 
must necessarily be self-existent: but it is included in the very notion 
of a creature, as such, not to exist of itself, but of God.. An absolutely 
perfect creature, therefore, implies a contradiction ; for it would be of 
itself, and not of itself, at the same time. Absolute perfection, therefore, 
is peculiar to God; and should he communicate his own peculiar per. 
fection to another, that other would be God. Imperfection must there- 
fore be tolerated in creatures, notwithstanding the Divine omnipotence 
and goodness ;—for con'radictions are no objects of power. God indeed 
might have refrained from acting, and continued alone self-sufficient 
and perfect to all eternity ; but infinite goodness would by no means 


SECOND. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 43) 


allow of this; and therefore since it obliged him to produce external 
things, which things could not possibly be perfect, it preferred these 
imperfect things to none at all; from whence it follows, that imperfec. 
tion arose from the infinity of Divine goodness.” (Origin of Evil.) 
This in part may be allowed. Imperfection must, in comparison of 
God, and of the creature’s own capacity of improvement, remain the 
character of a finite being; but it is not so clear that this imperfection 
must, at all times, and throughout the whole course of existence, imply 
liability to sin. God is free, and yet cannot “be tempted of evil.” “It 
is ¢mpossible for God to lie;” not for want of natural freedom, but be- 
cause of an absolute moral perfection. Liberty, and impeccability imply, 
therefore, no contradiction ; and it cannot, even on rational grounds, be 
concluded, that a free finite moral agent may not, by the special favour 
of God, be placed in circumstances in which sinning is morally impos- 
sible. Revelation undoubtedly gives this promise to .the faithful, in 
another state; a consummation to be effected, not by destroying their 
natural liberty, but by improving their moral condition. This was not 
however the case with man at his first creation, and during his abode in 
paradise. His state was not that of the glorified, for it was probationary, 
and it was yet inconceivably advanced abeve the present state of man ; 
since, with a nature unstained and uncorrupted, it was easy for him to 
have maintained his moral rectitude, and to have improved and con- 
firmed it. Obedience with him had not those clogs, and internal oppo- 
sitions, and outward counteractions, as with us. It was, however, a 
state which required watchfulness, and effort, and prayer, and denial of 
the appetites and passions, since Eve fell by her appetite, and Adam by 
his passion: and slight as, in the first instance, every external influence 
which ten’ed to depress the energy of the spiritual life, and lead man 
from God, might be, and easy to be resisted; it might become a step to 
a farther defection, and the nucleus of a fatal habit. Thus says Bishop 
Butler, with his accustomed acuteness: “ Mankind, and perhaps all 
finite creatures, from the very constitution of their nature, before habits 
of virtue, are deficient, and in danger of deviating from wl.at is right: 
and therefore stand in need of virtuous habits, for a security against this 
danger. For, together with the general principle of moral understand. 
ing, we have in our inward frame various affections toward particular 
external objects. These affections are naturally, and of right, subject 
to the government of the moral principle, as to the occasi-ns upon which 
they may be gratified: as to the times, degrees and manner, in which 
the objects of them may be pursued: but then the principle of virtue can 
neither excite them, nor prevent their being excited. Ou the contrary, 
they are naturally felt, when the objects of them are present to the 
mind, not only before all consideration, whether they can be obtained by 
awful means, but after it is found they cannot. For the natural objecis 


432 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PAPT 


of affection continue so: the necessaries, conveniences, and pleasures 
of life, remain naturally desirable ; though they cannot be obtained inno. 
cently ; nay, though they cannot possibly be obtained at all. And when 
the objects of any affection whatever cannot be obtained without unlaw.- 
ful means, but may be obtained by them; such affection, through its 
being excited, and its continuance some time in the mind, be it as inno- 
cent as it is natural and necessary ; yet cannot but be conceivec to have 
a tendency to incline persons to venture upon such unlawful means: 
and, therefore, must be conceived as putting them in some danger of it. 
Now, what is the general security against this danger, against their 
actually deviating from right? As the danger is, so also must the secu- 
rity be, from within; from the practical principle of virtue. And the 
strengthening or improving this principle, considered as practical, or as 
a principle of action, will lessen the danger, or increase the, security 
against it. And this moral principle is capable of improvement, by 
proper discipline and exercise: by recollecting the practical impres- 
sions which example and experience have made upon us: and, instead 
of following humour and mere inclination, by continually attending to 
the equity and right of the case, in whatever we are engaged, be it in 
greater or less matters, and accustoming ourselves always to act upon — 
it; as being itself the just and natural motive of action, and as this mo- 
ral course of behaviour must necessarily, under Divine government, be 
our final interest. Thus the principle of virtue, improved into habit, of 
which improvement we are thus capable, will plain'y be, in proportion to 
the strength of it, a security agamst the danger which finite creatures are 
in, from the very nature of propension, or particular affections. 

«¢ From these things we may observe, and it will farther show this our 
natural and original neea of being improved by discipline, how it comes 
to pass, that creatures made upright fall; and that those who preserve 
their uprightness, by so doing, raise themselves to a more secure state 
of virtue. ‘To say that the former is accounted for by the nature of 
liberty, is to say no more than that an event’s actually happening is 
accounted for by a mere possibility of its happenmg. But it seems 
distinctly conceivable from the very nature of particular affections or 
propeusions. For, suppose creatures intended for such a particular state 
of life for which such propensions were necessary : suppose them en. 
dued with auch propensions, together with moral understanding, as wel! 
including a practical sense of virtue, as a speculative perception of it: 
and that all these several principles, both natural and moral, forming an 
inward constitution of mind, were in the most exact proportion possible ; 
2. €. in a proportion the most exactly adapted to their mended state of 
life ; such creatures would be made upright, or finitely perfect. Now, 
particular propensions, from their very nature, must be felt, the objects of 
them being present ; though they cannot be gratified at all, or not with 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 433 


the allowance of the moral principle. But if they can be gratified with. 
aut its allowance, or by contradicting it ; then they must be conceived to 
have some tendency, in how low a degree soever, yet some tendency, 
to induce persons to such forbidden gratification. This tendency, in some 
one particular propension, may be increased, by the greater frequency 
of occasions naturally exciting it, than of occasions exciting others. 
The least voluntary indulgence in forbidden circumstances, though but 
in thought, will increase this wrong tendency; and may increase it 
farther, till, peculiar conjunctures perhaps conspiring, it becomes effect ; 
and danger of deviating from right, ends in actual deviation from it: a 
danger necessarily arising from the very nature of propension; and 
which, therefore, could not have been prevented, though it might have 
been escaped, or got innocently through. The case would be, as if we 
were to suppose a straight path marked out for a person, in which such 
a degree of attention would keep him steady: but if he would not attend 
in this degree, any one of a thousand objects, catching his eye, might lead 
him out of it. Now, it is impossible to say, how much even the first full 
overt act of irregularity might disorder the inward constitution, unsettle 
the adjustments, and alter the proportions which formed it, and in which 
the uprightness of its make consisted: but repetition of irregularities 
would produce habits. And thus the constitution would be spoiled; and 
creatures made upright become corrupt and depraved in their settled 
character, proportionably to their repeated irregularities in occasional 
acts. But, on the contrary, these creatures might have improved and 
raised themselves to a higher and more secure state of virtue by the 
contrary behaviour: by steadily following the moral principle, supposed 
to be one part of their nature: and thus withstanding that unavoidable 
danger of defection, which necessarily arose from propension, the other 
part of it. For by thus preserving their integrity for some time, their 
danger would lessen ; since propensions, by being inured to submit, would 
do it more easily and of course : and their security against this lessening 
danger would increase, since the moral principle would gain additional 
strength by exercise ; both which things are implied in the notion of 
virtuous habits. Thus, then, vicious indulgence is not only criminal in 
itself, but also depraves the inward constitution and character. And 
virtuous self government is not only right in itself, but also improves the 
inward constitution or character: and may improve it to such a degree, 
that though we should suppose it impossible for particular affections to 
be absolutely coincident with the moral principle; and consequently 
should allow, that such creatures as have been above supposed, would 
for ever remain defectible: yet their danger of actually deviating from 
right may be almost infinitely lessened, and they fully fortified against 
what remains of it: if that may be called danger against which there is 


an adequate effectual security. But still, this their higher perfection 
Vou I. Daal We 


43-4 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. - [PART 


may continue to consist in habits of virtue formed in a state of discipline, 
and this their more complete security remain to proceed from them. And 
thus it is plainly conceivable, that creatures without blemish, as thev 
came out of the hands of God, may be in danger of going wrong; and 
so may stand in need of the security of virtuous habits, additional to the 
moral principle wrought into their natures by him. That which is the 
ground of their danger, or their want of security, may be considered as 
a deficiency in them, to which virtuous habits are the natural supply. 
And as they are naturally capable of being raised and improved by 
discipline, it may be a thing fit and requisite, that they should be placed 
in circumstances with an eye to it: in circumstances peculiarly fitted 
to be, to them, a state of discipline for their improvement in virtue.” 
Analogy.) 

It is easy therefore to conceive, without supposing that moral liberty 
in all cases necessarily supposes liability to commit sin, how a perfectly 
pure and upright being might be capable of disobedience, though con. 
tinued submission to God and to his law was not only possible, but 
practicable without painful and difficult effort. ‘To be in a state of trial, 
the moral, as well as the natural freedom to choose evil was essential , 
and as far as this fact bears upon the question of the Divine goodness, it 
resolves itself into this, “whether it was inconsistent with that attribute 
of the Divine nature, to endow man with this liberty, or in other words 
to place him in a state of trial on earth, before his admission into that 
state from which the possibility of evil is for ever excluded.” To this, 
unassisted reason could frame no answer. By the aid of revelation 
we are assured, that benevolence is so absolutely the motive and the end 
of the Divine providence that thus to dispose of man, and consequently 
to permit his voluntary fall, is consistent with it; but in what manner it 
is so, is involved in obscurity : and the fact being estabiished, we may 
well be content to wait for the developement of that great process which 
shall “justify the ways of God to man,” without indulging in speculations 
which, for want of all the facts of the case before us, must always be tc 
a great extent without foundation, and may even seriously mislead. 
This we know, that the entrance of sin into the world has given occa- 
sion for the tenderest displays of the Divine goodness in the gift of the 
great Restorer; and opened, to all who will avail themselves of the 
blessing, the gate to “glory, honour, immortality, and eternal life.” ‘The 
observations of Doddridge on this subject, have a commendable modesty. 

Tt will still be demanded, why was moral evil permitted? To this it 
is gencrally answered, that it was the result of natural liberty ; and it 
was fit that among all the other classes and orders of beings, some 
should be formed possessed of this, as it conduces to the harmony of 
the universe, and to the beautiful variety of beings init. Yet still it is 
replied, Why did not God prevent this abuse of liberty? One would 


SECOND.| THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. ARS 


not willingly say, that he is not able to do it, without violating the nature 
of his creatures ; nr is it possible that any should prove this. It is com- 
monly said, that he permitted it, in order to extract from thence greater 
good. But it may be farther queried, Could he not have produced 
that greater good without sucii a means? Could he not have secured 
among all his creatures universal good, and universal happiness, in full 
consistency with the liberty he had given them? I acknowledge I see 
no way of answering this question but by saying, he had indeed a 
natural power of doing it, but that he saw it better not to do it, though 
the reasons upon which it appeared preferable to him are entirely un- 
known to us.” (Doddridge’s Lectures.) 

The mercy of God is not a distinct attribute of his nature, but a 
mode of his goodness. It is the disposition whereby he is inclined to 
succour those who are in misery, :ind to pardon those who have offended 
“In Scripture language,” says Archbishop Tillotson, “it is usually set 
forth to us by the expressions of pity and compassion; which is an 
affection that causes a sensible commotion and disturbance in us, upon. 
the apprehension of some great evil, either threatening or oppressing 
another ; pursuant to which, God is said to be grieved and afflicted for the 
miseries of men. But though God be pleased in this manner to convey 
an idea of his mercy and tenderness to us, yet we must take heed how 
we clothe the Divine nature with the infirmities of human passions: we 
must not measure the perfections of God by the expressions of his 
condescension ; and because he stoops to our weakness, level] him to our 
infirmities. When therefore God is said to pity us, or to be grieved at 
our afilictions, we must be careful to remove the imperfection of the 
passion, the commotion and disturbance that it occasions, and then we 
may conceive as strongly of the Divine mercy and compassion as we 
please; and that it exerts itself in a very tender and affectionate 
manner. 

«And therefore the Holy Scriptures not only tell us, that ‘the Lord 
our God is a merciful God,’ but that ‘he is the Father of mercies, and 
the God of all comfort ;’ that he ‘delights in mercy,—waits to be 
gracious,—rejoices over us to do good,—and crowneth us with his 
loving kindness :’ to denote the greatness and continuance of this affec- 
tion, they not only tell us that ‘ his mercy is above the heavens ;’ that it 
extends itself ‘over all his works,—is laid up in store for a thousand 
generations, and is to endure for ever and ever :’ to express the intense- 
ness of it, they not only tell us of the * multitude of his tender mercies, 
—the sounding of his bowels,’ the relentings of his heart, and ‘the 
kindlings of his repentance ;’ but to give us as sensible an idea as 
possible of the compassions of God, they compare them to the tenderest 
affections among men; to that of a father toward his children: ‘As a 
father pitieth his children, so the Lurd pitieth them that fear him ;’ nay 


436 THEOLUGICAL INSTITUTES. IPART 


to the compassion of a mother toward Ler infant; ‘can a woman forget 
her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of 
her womb? yea, she may forget,’ it is possible, though very unlikely ; 
but though a mother may become unnatural, yet God cannot prove un- 
merciful. 

“In short, the Scriptures every where magnify the mercy of God, aud 
speak of it with all possible advantage, as if the Divine nature, which 
does in all perfections excel every other thing, did in this perfection 
excel itself: and of this we have a farther conviction, if we lift but up 
our eyes to God, and then turning them upon ourselves, begin to con- 
sider how many evils and miseries, that every day we are exposed to, 
by his preventing mercy are hindered, or, when they were coming upon 
us, stopped or turned another way: how oft our punishment has he 
deferred by his forbearing mercy, or, when it was necessary for our 
chastisement, mitigated and made light: how oft we have been sup. 
ported in our afflictions by his comforting mercy, and visited with the 
light of his countenance, in the exigencies of our soul, and the gloomi- 
ness of despair: how oft we have been supplied by his relieving mercy 
in our wants, and, when there was no hand to succour, and no soul to 
pity us, his arm has been stretched out to lift us from the mire and clay, 
and by a providential train of events, brought about our sustenance and 
support: and above all, how daily, how hourly, how minutely we offend 
against him, and yet, by the power of his pardoning mercy, we are still 
alive: for, considering the multitude and heinousness of our provoca. 
tions, ‘it is of his mercy alone that we are not consumed, and because 
his compassions fail not. Whoso is wise will ponder these things, and 
he will understand the Joving kindness of the Lord.’” (Sermons.) 


CHAPTER VII. 
ATTRIBUTES OF Gop.—Hboliness. 


In creatures, holiness is conformity to the will of God, as expressec 
in his laws, and consists in abstinence from every thing which has 
been comprehended under the general term of sin, and in the habit and 
practice of righteousness. Both these terms are properly understood 
to include various principles, affections, and acts, which, considered 
separately, are regarded as vices or virtues ; and, collectively, as consti- 
tuting a holy or a polluted character. Our conception of holiness in 
creatures, both in its negative and its positive import, is therefore expli- 
cit; it is determined by the will of God. But when we speak of God, 
we speak of a Being who is a law to himself, and whose conduct cannot 
be referred to a higher authority than his own. This circumstance has 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 437 


given rise to various opinions on the subject of the holiness of the 
Divine Being, and to different modes of stating this glorious attribute ot 
fis moral nature. But without conducting the reader into the profitless 
question, whether there is a fixed and unalterable nature and fitness of 
things, independent of the Divine will on the one hand; or on the other, 
whether good and evil have their foundation, not in the nature of 
things, but only in the Divine will, which makes them such, there is a 
method, less direct it may be, but more Wie ys of assisting our 
thoughts on this subject. 

It is certain that various affections and actions have been enjoined 
upon all rational creatures under the general name of righteousness, 
and that their contraries have been prohibited. It is a matter also of 
constant experience and observation, that the good of society is pro- 
moted only by the one, and injured by the other; and also that every 
individual derives, by the very constitution of his nature, benefit and 
happiness from rectitude ; injury and misery from vice. This consti- 
tution of human nature is therefore an indication, that the Maker and 
Ruler of men formed them with the intent that they should avoid vice, 
and practise virtue; and that the former is the object of his aversion, 
the latter of his regard. On this principle all the Jaws, which in his 
legislative character almigiity God has enacted for the government of 
mankind, have been constructed. ‘The law is holy, and the command- 
ment holy, just, and good.” In the administration of the world, where 
God is so often seen in his judicial capacity, the punishments which are 
inflicted, indirectly or immediately upon men, clearly tend to discourage 
and prevent the practice of evil. ‘ Above all, the Gospel, that last and 
most perfect revelation of the Divine will, instead of giving the profes- 
sors of it any allowance to sin, because grace has abounded, (which is 
an injurious imputation cast upon it by ignorant and impious minds,) its 
chief design is to establish that great principle, God’s moral purity, and 
to manifest his abhorrence of sin, and inviolable regard to purity and 
virtue in his reasonable creatures. It was for this he sent his Son tuto 
the world to turn men from their iniquities, and bring them back to the 
paths of righteousness. For this, the blessed Jesus submitted to tie 
deepest humiliations and most grievous sufferings. He gave himself, 
(as St. Pau’ speaks) for his Church, that he might sanctify and cleanse 
it, that he might present it to himself a glorious Church, not having 
spot or wrinkle, but that it should be holy and without blemish : or, as it 
is elsewhere expressed, he gave himself for us, to redeem us from our 
in.quities, and to purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good 
works. In all this he is said to have done the will of his Father, and 
glorified him, that is, restored and prom>ted in the world, the cause of 
virtue and righteousness, which is the glory of God. And his life was 
the visible image of the Divine sanctity, proposed as a familiar example 


438 TILEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 3 |PART. 


to markind, for he was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from 
sinners. He did no sin neither was guile found in his mouth. And as 
Christianity appears, by the character of its author, and by his actions 
and sufferings, to be a designed evidence of the holiness of God, or of 
his aversion to sin, and his gracious desire to turn men from it, so the 
institution itself is perfectly pure, it contains the clearest and most lively 
descriptions of moral virtue, and the strongest motives to the practice 
of it. It promises, as from God, the kindest assistance to men, for 
making the Gospel effectual to renew them in the spirit of their minds, 
and to reform their lives, by his Spirit sent down from heaven, on 
purpose to convince the world of sin, and righteousness, and judgment. 
To enlighten them who were in darkness, and turn the disobedient to 
the wisdom of the just, to strengthen its converts to true religion, unto 
all obedience and long suffering, and patience, to enable them to resist 
temptation, to abound in the fruits of righteousness, and perfect holiness 
in the fear of God.” (Abernethy’s Sermons.) 

Since, then, it is so manifest, that ‘‘the Lord loveth righteousness, 
and hateth iniquity,” it must be necessarily concluded, that this prefer- 
ence of the one, and hatred of the other, flow from some principle in 
his very nature. “ That he is the righteous Lord. Of purer eyes than 
to behold evil,—one who cannot look upon iniquity.” ‘This principle 
is holiness, an attribute, which, in the most emphatic manner, is 
assumed by himself, and attributed to him, both by adoring angels im 
their choirs, and by inspired saints in their worship. He is, by his own 
designation, “the Hoty One of Israel ;” the seraphs in the vision of 
the prophet, cry continually, “ Hoty, nony, Hoxy, is the Lord God of 
hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory,” thus summing up all his glo 
ries in this sole moral perfection. The language of the sanctuary on 
earth is borrowed from that of heaven. ‘ Who shall not fear thee, O 
Lord, and glorify thy name, for thou only art HoLy.” 

If then there is this principle in the Divine mind, which leads him to 
prescribe, love, and reward truth, justice, benevolence, and every other 
virtuous affection and habit in his creatures which we sum up in the 
term holiness ; and to forbid, restrain, and punish their opposites ; that 
principle being essenfial in him, a part of his very nature and Godhead, 
must be the spring and guide of his own conduct ; and thus we conceive 
without difficulty of the essential rectitude or holiness of the Divine nature, 
aud the absolutely pure, and righteous character of his administration : 
“In him there can be no malice, or envy, or hatred, or revenge, or 
pride, or cruelty, or tyranny, or injustice, or falsehood, or unfaithfulness ; 
and if there be any thing beside which implies sin, and vice, and moral 
imperfection, holiness signifies that the Divine nature 1s at an infinite 
distance from it.” (Tillotson.) - Nor are we only to conceive of this 
quality negatively, but positively also, as “the actual, perpetual recti 


‘ 


SEUOND] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 439 


tude of all his volitions, and all the works and actions which are conse. 
quent thereupon ; and an eternal propension thereto, and love thereof, 
by which it is altogether impossible to that will that it should ever vary.” 
‘ Howe.) 

This attribute of holiness, exhibits itself in two great branches, 
justice and truth, which are sometimes also treated of as separate 
attributes. 

Justice, in its principle, is holiness, and is often expressed by the 
term righieousness ; but when it relates to matters of government, the 
universal rectitude of the Divine nature shows itself in inflexible regard 
to what is right, and in an opposition to wrong, which cannot be warped 
or altered in any degree whatever. “Just and right is he.” Justice 
in God, when it is uot regarded as universal, but pobacelan: is either 
legislative or judicial. 

Legislative justice determines man’s duty, and binds. him to the per 
formance of it, and also defines the rewards and punishments, which 
shall be due upon the creature’s obedience, or disobedience. This 
branch of Divine justice has many illustrations in Scripture. The prin 
ciple of it is, that absolute right which God has to the entire and 
perpetual obedience of the creatures which he has made. This right 
is unquestionable, and in pursuance of it, all moral agents are placed 
under Jaw, and are subject to rewards or punishments. None are 
excepted. ‘Those who have not God’s revealed law, have a law 
‘written on their hearts,” and are “a law unto themselves.” The ori- 
ginal law of obedience, given to man, was a law not to the first man, 
but to the whole human race; for if, as the apostle has laid it down, 
“the whole world,” comprising both Jews and Gentiles, is “ guzlty. before 
God,” then the whole world is under a law of obedience. In this 
respect God is just in asserting his own right to be obeyed, and in 
claiming, from the creature he has made and preserved, the obedience, 
which in strict righteousness he owes; but this claim is strictly limited, 
and never goes beyond justice into rigour. ‘ He is not a hard master, 
reaping where he has not sown, and gathering where he has not 
strewed.” His law ‘s however unchangeable in its demand upon man 
for universal ubedience, because man is considered in it as a creature 
capable of yieiding that obedience ; but when the human race became 
corrupt, means of pardon, consistent with righteous government, were 
antroduced, by the atonement for sin made by the death of Jesus Christ, 
received by faith; and supernatural aid was put within their reach, by 
which the evil of their nature might be removed, and the disposition 
and the power to obey the law of God imparted. The case of hea- 
tnen nations to whom the Gospel is not yet preached, may hereafier 
be considered. It involves some difficulties, but it is enough for 
as to know, that “ the Judge of the whole earth will do right ;” and that 


440 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. ~ [PART 


this shall be made apparent to all creatures, when the facts of the 
whole case shall be disclosed, “in the day of the revelation of Jesus 
Christ.” 

Judicial justice, more generally termed distributive justice, is that 
which respects rewards and punishments. God renders to men accord. 
ing to their works. This branch of justice is said to be remunerative, 
or premiative, when he rewards the obedient ; and vindictive, wheu he 
punishes the guilty. With respect to the first, it is indeed reward, 
properly speaking, not of debt, but of grace; for, antecedently, God 
cannot be a debtor to his creatures; but since he binds himself by 
engagements in his law, “this do and thou shalt live,” express or tacit, 
or attaches a particular promise of reward to some particular duty, it 
becomes a part of justice to perform the engagement. On this principle 
also, St. Paul says, Heb. vi, 10, “ God is not unrighteous to forget your 
work, and labour of love. And if we confess our sins, he is faithful 
and just to forgive us our sins.” “ Even this has justice in it. It is 
upon one account, the highest act of mercy imaginable, considering 
with what liberty and freedom the course and method were settled. 
wherein sins come to be pardoned : but it is an act of justice also, inas- 
much as it is the observation of a method to which he had bound himself, 
and from which afterward, therefore, he cannot depart, cannot vary.” 
(Howe’s Post. Works.) 

Vindictive or punitive justice, consists in the infliction of punishment. 
It renders the punishment of unpardoned sin certain, so that no criminal 
shall escape ; and it guarantees the exact proportion of punishment to 
the nature and circumstances of the offence. Both these circumstances 
are marked in numerous passages of Scripture, the testimony of which 
on this subject may be summed up in the words of Elihu : “ for the work 
of a man shall he render unto him, and cause every man to find accord. 
ing to his ways, yea, surely God will not do wickedly, neither will the 
Almighty pervert judgment.” 

What is called commutative justice, relates to the exchange of one 
thing for another of equal value, and is called forth by contracts, bar- 
gains, and similar transactions among men; but this branch of justice 
belongs not to God because of his dignity. ‘‘ He hath no equal, there 
are none of the same order with him to make exchanges with him or 
‘o transfer rights to him for any rights transferred from him.” “ Our 
righteousness extendeth not to him, nor can man be profitable to his 
Maker.” ‘The whole world of creatures is challenged and humbled by 
the question, “ Who hath given him any thing, and it shall be recom- 
vensed to him again ?” 

Strict impartiality is. however, a prominent character in the justice 
of God. “There is no respect of persons with God.” As on the one 
hand he hateth nothing which he has made, and cannot be influenced 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. . 441 


hy prejudices and prepossessions; so on the other, he can fear no one 
uowever powerful. No being is necessary to him, even as an agent te 
fulfil his plans, that he should overlook his offences ; no combination of 
ocings can resist the steady and equal march of his administration. The 
majesty of his Godhead sets him infinitely above all such considerations. 
“The Lord our God is the God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, 
a mighty and terrible, which regardeth not persons, neither taketh re- 
wards.—-He accepteth not the person of princes, nor regardeth the rich 
more than the poor, for they are all the work of his hands.” 

There are however many circumstances in the administration of the 
affairs of the world, which appear irreconcilable to that strict and exact 
exercise of justice we have ascribed to God as the supreme Ruler. 
These have sometimes been urged as objections, and the writers of 
systems of “natural religion” have often found it difficult to answer 
them. That has arisen from their excluding from such systems, as 
much as possible, the light of revelation; and on that account, much 
more than from the real difficulties of the cases adduced, it is, that their 
reasonings are often unsatisfactory. Yet if man is, in point of fact, 
under a dispensation of grace and mercy, and that is now in perfect 
accordance with the strictest justice of God’s moral government, nei- 
ther his circumstances, nor the conduct of God toward him, can ever 
be judged of by systems which are constructed expressly on the prin- 
_ ciple of excluding all such views as are peculiar to the Scriptures. In 
attempting it the cause of truth has been injured rather than served ; 
because a feeble argument has been often wielded when a powerful 
one was at hand; and the answer to infidel objectors has been partial, 
lest it should be said that the full and sufficient reply was furnished, 
not by human reason, but by the reason, the wisdom of God himself as 
embodied in his word. ‘This is however little better than a solemn 
manner of trifling with truths which so deeply concern men. 

But let the two facts which respect the relations of man to God as 
the Governor of the world, and which stamp their character upon his 
administration, be ooth taken into account ;—that God is a just Ruler,— 
and yet, that offending man is under a dispensation of mercy, which 
provides, through the sacrifice of Christ meritoriously, and his own 
repentance and faith instrumentally, for his forgiveness, and for the 
healing of his corrupted nature; and a strong, and generally a most 
satisfactory light is thrown upon those cases which have been sup- 
posed most irreconcilable to an exact and righteous government. 

The doctrine of a future and general judgment, which alone explains 
so many difficulties in the Divine administration, is grounded solely on 
the doctrine of redemption. Under an administration of strict justice, 
punishment must have followed offence without delay. This is indicated 
‘n the sanction of the first law, “in the day thou eatest thereof, thou 


442 THEOLOGICAL INSTITU1Es.— - [PART 


shalt surely die,” a threat which, we may learn from Scripture, would 

have been executed fully, but for the immediate introduction of thie 

redeeming scheme. If we suppose the first pair to have preserved their 

innocence, and any of their descendants at any period to have become 

disobedient, they must have borne their own iniquity ; and punishment, 

to death and excision, must instantly have followed; for, in the care of 

a Divine government, where the parties are God and a creature, every 

sin must be considered capital, since the penalty of death is, in every 

case, the sentence of the Divine law against transgression. Under such 
an adminisirauon, no reason would seem to exist Pa a general judgment 
at the close of the world’s duration. That has its reason in the circum- 
stances of trial in which men are placed by the introduction of a method 
of recovery. Justice, in connection with a sufficient atonement, admits 
of the suspension of punishment for offence, of long suffering, of the 
application of means of repentance and conversion ; and that throughout 
the whole term of natural life. The judgment, the examination, and 
public exhibition of the use or abuse of this patience, and of those means, 
is deferred to one particular day, in which he who now offers grace 
shall administer justice, strict and unsparing. This world is not the 
appointed place of final judgment, under the new dispensation ; the space 
of human life on earth is not the ¢2me appointed for it; and however 
difficult it may be, without taking these things into consideration, to trace 
the manifestations of justice in God’s moral government, or to reconcile 
certai circumstances to the character of a righteous governor, by their 
aid the difficulty is removed. Justice, as the principle of his adminis- 
tration, has a sufficiently awful manifestation in the miseries which, in 
this life, are attached to vice; in the sorrows and sufferings to which a 
corrupted race is subjected ; and, above all, in the satisfaction exacted 
from the Son of God himself, as the price of human pardon: but since 
the final punishment of persevering and obstinate offenders is, by God’s 
own proclamation, postponed to “a day appointed, in which he will judge 
the world in righteousness, by that man whom he hath ordained,” and 
since also the final rewards of the reconcilea and recovered part of 

mankind are equally delayed, it is folly to look for a perfect exercise of 

justice in the present state. 

We may learn therefore from th:s,— 

1, That it is no impeachment of a righteous government, that est rn 
prosperity should be the lot of great offenders. It may be part of a 
gracious administration to bring them to repentance by favour, or it may 
be designed to make their fall and final punishment more marked ; or it 
may be’ intended to teach the important lesson of the slight value of out- 
ward advantages, separate from holy habits and a thankful mind. 

2. That it is not inconsistent with rectitude, that even those who are 
forgiven and reconciled, those who are become dear to God, should be 


SECOND. | THEOLCGICAL + INSTITUTES 443 


afflicted and oppressed, since their defects and omissions may require 
chastisement, and since also these are made the means of their excelling 
in virtue, of aiding their heavenly mindedness, and of qualifying them 
for a better state. 

3. That as the administration under which man is placed is one of 
grace in harmony with justice, the dispensation of what is matter of pure 
favour, may have great variety and be even very unequal without any 
impeachment of justice. The parable of the labourers in the vineyard 
seems designed to illustrate this. ‘To all God will be able, at the reckon- 
ing at the close of the day, to say, “I do thee no wrong ;” no principle 
of justice will be violated; it will then appear that “he reaps not 
where he hes not sown.” But the other principle will have been as 
strikingly made manifest, “Is it not lawful for me to do what I will 
with my own 2?” 

With nations the case is otherwise. ‘Their rewards and punishments 
being of a civil nature, may be fully administered in this life, and, as 
bodies politic, they have no posthumous existence. Reward and retri- 
bution, in their case, have been therefore in all ages visible and striking , 
and, in the conduct of the great Ruler to them, “ his judgments” are said 
to be “abroad in the earth.” In succession, every vicious nation has 
perished ; and always by means so marked, and often so singular, as to 
bear upon them a broad and legible punitive character. With collective 
bodies of men, indeed, the government of God in this world is greatly 
concerned ; and that both in their civil and religious character; with 
Churches, so to speak, as well as with states ; and, in consequence, the 
cases of individuals, as all cannot be of equal guilt or innocence, must 
often be mixed and confounded. These apparent, and sometimes, per- 
haps, from the operation of a general system, real irregularities, can be 
compensated to the good, or overtaken as to the wicked, in their per- 
sonal character in another state, to which we are constantly directed 
to look forward, as to the great and ample comment upon all that is 
obscure in this. 

For the discoveries of the word of God as to this attribute of the 
Divine nature, we owe the most grateful acknowledgments to its Author. 
Without this revelation, indeed, the conceptions which heathens form of 
the justice with which the world is administered, are exceedingly imper-. 
fect and unsettled. The course of the world is to them a flow without 
_a direction, movement without control; and glogm and impatience must 
‘often be the result: (5) taught as we are, we see nothing loose or dis. 


(5) The accomplished Quinctilian may be given as an instance of this, and 
also of what the apostle calls their sorrowing ‘‘ without hope.” In pathetically 
lamenting the death of his wife and sons, he tells us, that he had lost ail taste 
for study, and that everv good parent would condemn him, if he emploved his 
tongue for any other purpose than to accuse the gods, and testify against a 


444 THEOLOGICAI INSTITUTES. - [PART 


Jointed in the system. A firm hand grasps and controls and directs the 
whole. ‘This governing power 1s also manifested to us as our friend, 
our father, and our God, delighting in mercy, and resorting only to 
severity when we ourselves oblige the reluctant measure. On these 
firm principles of justice and mercy, truth and goodness, every thing in 
private as well as public is conducted ; and from these stable foundations, 
no change, no convulsion, can shake off the vast frame of human nte- 
rests and coucerns. 

Allied to justice, as justice is allied to holiness, is the rruru of God, 
which manifestation of the moral character of God has also an eminent 
place in the inspired volume. His paths are said to be “ mercy and 
truth,” —his words, ways, and judgments, to be true and righteous. « His 
mercy is great to the heavens and his ¢ruth to the clouds. He keepeth 
truth for ever. The strength of Israel will not lie. It is impossible 
that God should le. He is the fazthful God which keepeth covenant 
and mercy: he abideth faithful.” From these and other passages, it is 
plain that truth is contemplated by the sacred writers in its two great 
branches, veracily and faithfulness, both of which they ascribe to God, 
with an emphasis and vigour of phrase which show at once their belief 
of the facts, their trust and confidence in them, and the important place 
which they considered the existence of such a being to hold in a system 
of revealed religion. It forms, indeed, the basis of all religion, to know 
the trwe God, and to know that that God is true. In the Bible this must 
of necessity be fully and satisfactorily declared, because of the other 
discoveries which it makes of the Divine nature. If it reveals to us as 
the only living and true God, a being of knowledge infinitely perfect, 
then he himself cannot be deceived ; and his knowledve is true, because 
conformable to the exact and perfect reality of <aings. If he is holy, 
without spot or defect, then his word must be conformable to his know- 
ledge, will, and intention. On this account he cannot deceive others. 
In all his dealings with us, he uses a perfect sincerity, and represents 
things as they are, whether laws to be obeyed, or doctrines to be believed. 
All is perfect and absolute veracity in his communications. “ God is 
light, and in him is no darkness at all.” 

His raAIruFULNEsss relates to his engagements, and is confirmed to us 

‘ith the same certainty as his veracity. If he enters into engagen ents. 
promises, and covenants, he acts with perfect freedom. ‘These are acts 
of grace to which he is under no compulsion, and they can never, tliere- 
fore, be reluctant engagements which he would wish to violate; because 
they flow from a ceaseless and changeless inclination to bestow benefits, 
und a delight in the exercise of goodness. They can never be made in 


Providence. ‘ Quis enim bonus parens mihi ignoscat, ac non oderit hane animi 
wei firmitatem, si quis ii me est alius usus vocis, quam ut incusem deos, superstes 
ommniuim rieoruin, nullam terras despicere providentiam tester?” (Justet Lib. 6.) 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL +INSTITUTES. 41 


naste or unadvisedly, for the whole case of his creatures to the end of 
ame is before him, and: no circumstances can arise which to him are 
new or unforeseen. He cannot want the power to fulfil his promises, 
because he is omnipotent ; he cannot promise beyond his ability to make 
good, because his fulness is infinite; finally, «he cannot deny himself,” 
because “he is not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he 
should repent ;” and thus every promise which he has made is guaran- 
teed, as well by his natural attributes of wisdom, power, and sufficiency, 
as by his perfect moral rectitude. In this manner the true God stands 
contrasted with the “Zying vanities” of the heathen deities; and in this 
his character of truth, the everlasting foundations of his religion are 
laid. That changes not, because the doctrines taught in it are in them- 
selves true without error, and can never be displaced by new and better 
discoveries ; it fails not, because every gracious promise must by him 
be accomplished ; and thus the religion of the Bible continues from age 
to age, and from day to day, as much a matter of personal experience 
as it ever was. In its doctrines it can never become an antiquated 
theory, for truth is eternal. In its practical application it can never 
become foreign to man, for it enters now, and must ever enter into his 
concerns, his duties, hopes, and comforts, to the end of time. We know 
what is ¢rue as an object of belief, because the God of truth has declared 
it; and we know what is faithful, and, therefore, the object of unlimit- 
ed trust, because “he is faithful that hath promised.” Whether, there- 
fore, in the language of the old divines, we consider God’s word as 
“declaratory or promisory,” declaring “ how things are or how they shall 
be,” or promising to us certain benefits, its absolute truth is confirmed 
to us by the truth of the Divine nature itself; it claims the undivided 
assent of our judgment, and the unsuspicious trust of our hearts ; and 
presents, at once, a sure resting place for our opinions, and a faithful 
object for our confidence. 

Such are the adorable attributes of the ever-blessed God which are 
distinctly revealed to us in his own word ; in addition to which there 
are other and more general ascriptions of excellence to lim, which 
though, from the very greatness of the subject, and the imperfection of 
human conception and human language, they are vague and indeter- 
minate, serve, for this very reason, to heighten our conceptions of him, 
and to set before tue humbled and awed spirit of man an overwhelm- 
ing height and depth of majesty and glory. 

God is perfect. We are thus taught to ascribe to him every natural 
and moral excellence we can conceive ; and when we have done that, 
we are to conclude, that if any nameless and unconceived glory be neces- 
sary to complete a perfection which excludes all deficiency ; which is 
capable of no excess; which is unalterably full and complete—it exists 
m him, Every attribute in him is perfect in its kind, and is the most 


116 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. - '-. TPART 


elevated of its kind. It is perfect in its degree, not falling in the least 
below the standard of the highest excellence, either in our conceptions, 
or those of angels, or in the possible nature of things itself. These 
various perfections are systematically distributed into tncommunicable, 
as self existence, immensity, eternity, omniscience, omnipotence, and 
the like, because there is nothing in creatures which could be signified . 
by such names; no common properties of which these could be the 
cammon terms, and therefore, they remain peculiarly and exclusively 
proper to God himself: and communicable, such as wisdom, goodness. 
holiness, justice, and truth, because, under the same names, they may 
be-spoken of him and of us, though in a sense infinitely inferior. But 
all these perfections form the one glorious perfection and fulness of ex- 
cellence which constitutes the Divine nature. They are not accidents, 
separable from that nature, or superadded to it; but they are his very 
nature itself, which is and must be perfectly wise and good, holy and 
just, almighty and all-sufficient. This idea of positive perfection, which 
runs through the whole of Scripture, warrants us also to conclude, that 
where negative attributes are ascribed to God, they imply always a 
positive excellence. Immortality implies “ an undecaying fulness of life ;” 
and when God is said to be invisible, the meaning is, that he is a being 
of too high an excellency, of too glorious and transcendent a nature, to 
be subject to the observation of sense. 

God is all-sufficient. ‘This is another of those declarations of Scrip. 
ture, which exalt our views of God into a mysterious, unbounded, and 
undefined amplitude of grandeur. It is sufficeency, absolute plenitude 
and fulness from himself, eternally rising out of his own perfections ; 
for himself, so that he is atu to himself, and depends upon no other 
being; and for all that communication, however large and however 
lasting, on which the whole universe of existent creatures depends, and 
from which future creations, if any take place, can only be supplied. 
The same vast thought is expressed by St. Paul, in the phrase “ ALL IN 
ALL,” which, as Howe justly observes, (Posthumous Works,) “is a most 
godlike phrase, wherein God doth speak of himself with Divine great- 
ness and myvjestic sense. Here is an ALL in ALL; an all comprehended 
and an all comprehending ; one create, and the other uncreate; the 
former contained in the latter, and lost like a drop in the ocean, in the 
all-comprehending, all-pervading, all-sustaining uncreated fulness.” “ Ir 
him we live, and move, and have our being.” 

God is unsearchable. All we see or hear of him is faint and shadowy 
manifestation. Beyond the highest glory, there is yet an unpierced and 
unapproached light, a track of intellectual and moral splendour untra- 
velled by the thoughts of the contemplating and adoring spirits who are 
nearest to his throne. ‘The manifestation of this nature of God, never 
fully to be revealed, because infinite, is represented as constituting the 


SECOND.) THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 447 


reward and the felicity of heaven. This is “to see God.” This is *to 
oe for ever with the Lord.” This is to behold his glory as in a glass, 
with unveiled face, and to be changed into his image, from glory to 
glory, in boundless progression and infinite approximation. Yet, after 
all, it will be as true, after countless ages spent in heaven itself, as in 
the present state, that none by “searching can find out God,” that is, 
‘to perfection.” He will then be “a God that hideth himself;” ard 
widely as the illumination may extend, “clouds and darkness will still 
be round about him.—His glorious name is exalted above all blessing 
and praise.—Thine, O Lord is the greatness, and the power, and the 
glory, and the victory, and the majesty ; for all that is in the heaven and 
in the earth is thine ; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted 
as head over all.—Buxssrp be the Lorp Gop of Israel, who only doeth 
wondrous things ; and BiesseD be his glorious name for ever, and let 
the whole earth be filled with his cLory. Amen and Amen.” 


—_——_——— 


CHAPTER VIII. 
Gop.—The Trinity in Unity. 


We now approach this great mystery of our faith, for the declaration 
of which we are so exclusively indebted to the Scriptures that not only 
is it incapable of proof @ priorz ; but it derives no direct confirmatory 
evidence from the existence, and wise and orderly arrangement, of the 
works of God. It stands, however, on the unshaken foundation of his 
own word; that testimony which he has given of himself in both Tes- 
taments; and if we see no traces of it, as of his simple being and ope- 
rative perfections, in the works of his creative power and wisdom, the 
reason is that creation in itself could not be the medium of manifesting, 
or of illustrating it. Some, it is true, have thought the trinity of Divine 
persons in the unity of the Godhead demonstrable by natural reason. 
Poiret and others, formerly, and Professor Kidd, recently, have all 
attempted to prove, not that this doctrine implies a contradiction, but 
that it cannot be denied without a contradiction ; and that it is impossi- 
ble but that the Divine nature should so exist. The former endeavours 
to prove that neither creation, nor indeed any action in the Deity was 
possible, but from this tri-unity. But his arguments, were they adduced, 
would scarcely be considered satisfactory, even by those whose belief 
in the doctrine is most settled. The latter argues from notions of dura- 
tion and space, which themselves have not hitherto been satisfactorily 
established, and if they had, would yield but slight assistance in such an 
investigation. This, however, may be said respecting such attempts, 
that they at least show, that men, quite as eminent for strength of 


® 


448 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES — , PARE 


understanding, and logical acuteness, as any who have decried the doc- 
trine of the trinity as irrational and contradictory, find no such oppusi- 
tion in it to the reason, or to the nature of things, as the latter pretend 
to be almost self evident. The very opposite conclusions reached by 
the parties, when they reason the matter by the light of their own intel- 
lect only, is a circumstance, it is true, which lessens our confidence in 
pretended rational demonstrations ; but it gives neither party a right te 
assume any thing at the expense of the other. Such failures ought, 
indeed, to produce in us a proper sense of the inadequacy of human 
powers to search the deep things of God ; and they forcibly exhibit the 
necessity of Divine teaching in every thing which relates to such sub. 
jects, and demand from us an entire docility of mind, where God him. 
self has condescended to become our instructer. 

More objectionable than the attempts which have been made to prove 
this mystery by mere argument, are pretensions to explain it; whether, 
by what logicians call immanent acts of Deity upon himself, from whence 
arise the relations of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; or by assuming 
that the trinity is the same as the three “essential primalities, or active 
powers in the Divine essence, power, intellect, and will,” (6) for which 
they invent a kind of personification; or, by alleging that the three 
persons are “ Deus seipsum intelligens, Deus a seipso intellectus, et Deus 
a seipso amatus.” All such hypotheses either darken the counsel they 
would explain, by “ words without knowledge,” or assume principles, 
which, when expanded into their full import, are wholly inconsistent 
with the doctrine as it is announced in the Scripture, and which their 
advocates have professed to receive. 

It is a more innocent theory, that types and symbols of the mystery 
of the trinity are found in various natural objects. From the fathers, 
many have illustrated the trinity of persons in the same Divine nature 
by the analogy of three or more men having each the same human 
nature ; by the union of two natures of man in one person; by the 
trinity of intellectual primary faculties in the soul, power, intellect, and 
will, ** posse, scire, velle,’ which they say are not three parts of the soul, 
“it being the whole soul que potest, que intelligit, et que vult ;” by 
motion, light, and heat in the sun, with many others. Of these instances, 
however, we may observe, that even granting them all to be philoso. 
phically true, they cannot be proofs ; they are seldom, or very inappli- 
cubly allustrations ; and the best use to which they have ever been put, 
or of which they are indeed capable, is to silence the absurd objections 
which are sometimes drawn from things merely natural and finite, by 
answers which natural and finite things supply ; though both the objec- 


(6) ‘‘ Potentia, Intellectus, et Voluntas,” or ‘‘ Potentia, Sapientia, et Amor.”— 
(Campanella, Richardus, and others.) 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 449 


tions and the answers often prove, that the subject in question is too 
elevated and peculiar to be approached by such analogies. Of these 
illustrations, as they have been sometimes called, Baxter, though 
inclined to make too much of them, well enough observes,—“ It is one 
thing to show in the creatures a clear demonstration of this trinity of 
persons, by showing an effect that fully answereth it, and another thing 
to show such vestigia, adumbration, or image of it, as hath those dissi- 
militudes which. must be allowed in any created image of God. This 
is it which I am to do.” (Christian Religion.) This excellent man has 
been charged, perhaps a little too hastily, with adopting one of the 
theories given above, as his own view of the trinity, a trinity of per 
sonified attributes, rather than of real persons. It must, however, be 
acknowledged, that he has given some occasion for the allegation, but 
his conclusion is worthy of himself, and instructive to all :—*« But for 
my own part, as I unfeignedly account the doctrine of the trinity the 
very sum and kernel of the Christian religion, (as exprest in our bap- 
tism,) and Athanasius his creed, the best explication of it that ever I 
read; so [| think it very unmeet in these tremendous mysteries to go 
farther than we have God’s own light to guide us.” (Christ. Religion.) 

The term person has been variously taken. It signifies in ordinary 
language an individual substance of a rational or intelligent nature. (7) 
In the strict philosophical sense, it has been said, two or more persons 
would be two or more distinct beings. If the term person were so 
applied to the trinity in the Godhead, a plurality of Gods would follow ; 
while if taken in what has been called a political sense, personality 
would be no more than relation, arising out of office. Personality in 
God is, therefore, not to be understood in either of the above senses, if 
respect be paid to the testimony of Scripture. God is one being ; this 
is admitted on both sides. But he is more than one being in three rela- 
tions ; for personal acts, that is, such acts as we are used to ascribe to 
distinct persons, and which we take most unequivocally to characterize 
personality, are ascribed to each. The Scripture doctrine therefore is, 
that the persons are not separate, but distinct; that they “are united 
persons, or persons having no separate existence, and that they are so 
united as to be but one being, one God.” In other words, that the one 
Divine nature exists under the personal distinction of Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost. 

“ The word person,” Howe remarks, “ must not be taken to signify 
the same thing, when spoken of God and of ourselves.” That is, not an 
all respects. Nevertheless it is the only word which can express the 
sense of those passages, in which personal acts are unequivocally 
ascribed to each of the Divine subsistences in the Godhead. Perhaps, 


(7) It is defined by Occam, ‘“‘ Suppositum intellectuale.” 
Vou I. 29 


450 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, _ \PART 


however, one may be allowed to doubt whether, in all respects, the 
term person may not be taken to signify “the same thing” in us and in 
God. It is true, as before observed, that three persons among men or 
angels, would convey the idea of three different and separate beings; 
but it may be questioned whether this arises from any thing necessarily 
conveyed in the idea of personality. We have been accustomed to 
observe personality only in connection with separate beings; but this 
separation seems to be but a circumstance connected with personality, 
and not any thing which arises out of personality itself. Dr. Waterland 
clearly defines the term person, as it must be understood in this contro- 
versy, to be “an intelligent agent, having the distinct characters, J. 
THOU, HE.” ‘That one being should necessarily conclude one person 
only, is, however, what none can prove from the nature of things; and 
all that can be affirmed on the subject is, that it is so in fact among all 
intelligent creatures with which we are acquainted. Among them, dis- 
tinct persons are only seen in separate beings, but this separation of 
‘being is clearly an accident of personality; for the circumstance of 
separation forms no part of the idea of personality itself, which is con- 
fined to a capability of performing personal acts. In God, the distinct 
persons are represented as having a common foundation in one beiag: 
but this union also forms no part of the idea of personality, nor can be 
proved inconsistent with it. ‘The manner of the union, it is granted, is 
incomprehensible, and so is Deity himself, and every essential attribute 
with which his nature is invested. 

It has been said, that the term person is not used in Scripture, and 
some who believe the doctrine it expresses, have objected to its use. 
To such it may be sufficient to reply, that provided that which is clearly 
stated in Scripture, be compendiously expressed by this term, and cannot 
so well be expressed, except by an inconvenient periphrasis, it ought to 
be retained. ‘They who believe such a distinction in the Godhead as 
amounts to a personal distinction, will not generally be disposed to sur- 
render a word which keeps up the force of the Scriptural idea ; and they 
who do not, object not to the term, but to the doctrine which it conveys. 
It is not, however, so clear, that there is not Scripture warrant for the 
term itself. Our translators so concluded, when in Heb. i, 3, they call 
the Son, “the express image” of the “ person” of the Father. The ori. 
ginal word is hypostasis; which was understood by the Greek fathers 
to signify a person, though not, it is true, exclusively so used. (8) The 
sense of urocracis in this passage, must, however, be considered as fixed 


(8) ‘*Nonnunquam vrosans pro eo quod nos j,voav dicimus et vise versa vor 
oveca pro €O quod nos vrosacw appellamus, ab ipsis accepta fuit."—Bishop Bull 
rrusaos, it ought, however, to be observed, was used in the sense cf person befcre 
the corncil of Nice, by many Christian writers, and, in the ancient Greek Lexi 
cons, it s explained by zpocwrov, and rendered by the Latins persora. 


e 
SECOND.| THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 45) 


by the apastle’s argument, by all who allow the Divinity of the Son ot 
God. For the Son being called “the express image” of the Father, a 
distinction between the Son and the Father is thus unquestionably 
expressed ; but if there be but one God, and the Son be Divine, the dis- 
tinction here expressed cannot be a distinction of essence, and must 
therefore be a personal one. Not from the Father’s essence, but from 
the Father’s hypostasis or person, can he be distinguished. This seems 
sufficient to have warranted the use of hypostasis in the sense of person 
in the early Church, and to authorize the latter term in our own lan- 
guage. In fact, it was by the adoption of the two great theological 
terms owoxciog and varodradic that the early Church at length reared up 
impregnable barriers against the two leading heresies into which almost 
every modification of error as to the person of Christ may be resolved. 
The former, which is compounded of owog, the same, and sia, substance, 
stood opposed to the Arians, who denied that Christ was of the substance 
of the Father, that is, that he was truly God; the latter, when fixed in 
the sense of person, resisted the Sabellian scheme, which allowed the 
Divinity of the Son and Spirit, but denied their proper personality. 

Among the leading writers in defence of the trinity, there are some 
shades of difference in opinion, as to what constitutes the unzty of the 
three persons in the Godhead. Doddridge thus expresses these leading 
differences among the orthodox :— 

‘¢Mr. Howe seems to suppose, that there are three distinct, eternal 
spirits, or distinct intelligent hypostases, each having his own distinct, 
singular, intelligent nature, united in such an inexplicable manner, as 
that upon account of their perfect harmony, consent, and affection, to 
which he adds their mutual self consciousness, they may be called the 
one God, as properly as the different corporeal, sensitive, and intellectual 
natures united may be called one man. 

“Dr. Waterland, Dr. A. Taylor, with the rest of the Athanasians, 
assert three proper distinct persons, entirely equal to, and independent 
upon each other, yet making up one and the same being; and thai, 
though there may appear many things inexplicable in the scheme, it is 
to be charged to the weakness of our understanding, and not to the 
absurdity of the doctrine itself. 

“Bishop Pearson, with whom Bishop Bull also agrees, is of opinion, 
that though God the Father is the fountain of the Deity, the whole Di- 
vine nature is communicated from the Father to the Son, and from poth 
tc the Spirit, yet so as that the Father and the Son are not separate, nor 
separable from the Divinity, but do still exist in it, and are most inti 
mately united to it. This was also Dr. Owen’s scheme.” (Lectures.) 

The last view appears to comport most exactly with the testimony of 
Scripture, which shall be presently adduced. 

Before we enter upon the examinationof the Scriptural proofs of the 


a 
452 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, [PART 


trinity, it may be necessary to impress the reader with a sense of the 
tmportance of this revealed doctrine; and the more sv as it has been a 
part of the subtle warfare of the enemies of this fundamental branch of 
the common faith, to represent it as of little consequence, or as a matter 
of useless speculation. Thus Dr. Priestley, “ All that can be said for it 
is, that the doctrine, however improbable in itself, is necessary to expla n 
some particular texts of Scripture ; and that, if it had not been for thse 
particular texts we should have found no want of it, for there is neither 
any fact in nature, nor any one purpose of morals, which are the object 
and end of all religion, that requires it.” (History of Early Opinions.) 

The non-importance of the doctrme has been a favourite subject with 
its opposers in all ages, that by allaying all fears in the minds of the 
unwary, as to the consequences of the opposite errors, they might be 
put off their guard, and be the more easily persuaded to part with “the 
faith delivered to the saints.” The answer is, however, obvious. 

1. The knowledge of God is fundamental to religion; and as we 
know nothing of him but what he has been pleased to reveal, and as 
these revelations have all moral ends, and are designed to promote piety 
and not to gratify curtosity, all that he has revealed of himself in par- 
ticular, must partake of that character of fundamental importance, which 
belongs to the knowledge of God in the eggregate. “ This is life eternal, 
that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom 
thou hast sent.” Nothing, therefore, can disprove the fundamental im- 
portance of the trinity in unity, but that which will disprove it to be a 
doctrine of Scripture. 

2. Dr. Priestley allows, that this doctrine “is necessary to explain 
some particular texts of Scripture.” This alone is sufficient to mark its 
importance ; especially as it can be shown, that these “ particular texts 
of Scripture” comprehend a very large portion of the sacred volume ; 
that they are scattered throughout almost all the books of both Testa. 
ments; that they are not incidentally introduced only, but solemnly laid 
down as revelations of the nature of God; and that they manifestly give 
the tone both to the thinking and the phrase of the sacred writers on 
many other weighty subjects. That which is necessary to explain so 
many passages of holy writ, and without which, they are so incorrigibly 
unmeaning, that the Socinians have felt themselves obliged to submit 
to their evidence, or to expunge them from the inspired record, carries 
with it an importance of the highest character. So important, indeed, 
is it, upon the showing of these opposers of the truth themselves, that 
we can only preserve the Scriptures by admi'ting it; for they, first by 
excepting to the genuineness of certain passages, then by questioning 
the inspiration of whole books, and, finally, of the greater part, if 
not the whole New Testament, have nearly left themselves as destitute 
of a revelation from God as infidels themselves. No homage more ex. 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 453 


pressive has ever been paid to this doctrine, as the doctrine of the Scrip. 
tures, than the liberties thus taken with the Bible, by those who have 
denied it; no stronger proof can be offered of its importance, than that 
the Bible cannot be interpreted upon any substituted theory, they them. 
selves being the judges. 

3. It essentially affects our views of God as the object of our worshij), 
whether we regard him as one in essence, and one in person, or admit 
that in the unity of this Godhead there are three equally Divine persons. 
These are two very different conceptions. Both cannot be true. The 
God of those who deny the trinity, is not the God of those who worship 
the trinity in unity, nor on the contrary ; so that one or the other wor- 
ships what is “ nothing in the world ;” and, for any reality in the object 
of worship, might as well worship a pagan idol, which also, says St. 
Paul, “is nothing in the world.” “If God be Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost, the duties owing to God will be duties owing to that triune dis- 
tinction, which must be paid accordingly ; and whoever leaves any of 
them out of his idea of God, comes so far short of honouring God per- 
fectly, and of serving him in proportion to the manifestations he has 
made of himself.” (Waterland.) 

As the object of our worship is affected by our respective views on this 
great subject, so also its character. We are between the extremes of 
pure and acceptable devotion, and of gross and offensive idolatry, and 
must run to one or the other. If the doctrine of the trinity be true, 
then those who deny it do not worship the God of the Scriptures, but a 
fiction of their own framing; if it be false, the trinitarian, by paying 
Divine honours to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, is equally guilty of . 
idolatry, though in another mode. 

Now it is surely important to determine this; and which is the most 
likely to have fallen into this false and corrupt worship, the very prima 
facie evidence may determine :—the trinitarian, who has the letter, and 
plain, common-sense interpretation of Scripture for his warrant ;—or he 
who confesses that he must resort to all the artifices of criticism, and 
boldly challenge the inspiration of an authenticated volume, to get rid of 
the evidence which it exhibits against him, if taken in its first and most 
obvious meaning. (9) It is not now attempted to prove the Socinian 
heresy from the Scriptures; this has long been given up, and the main 
eflort of all modern writers on that side has been directed to cavil at the 
adduced proofs of the opposite doctrine. ‘They are as to Scripture argu- 
ment, wholly on the defensive, and thus allow, at least, that they have 
no direct warrant for their opinions. We acknowledge, indeed, that the 
charge of idolatry would lie against us, could we be proved in error ; 


(9) St. Paul says, that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God; but Dr. 
Priestley tells us, that this signifies nothing more than that the books were written 
by good men, with the best views and designs. 


454 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, . [PAR 


but they scem to forget, that it lies against them, should they be in error ; 
and that they are in this error, they themselves tacitly acknowledge, if 
the Scriptures, which they now in great measure reject, must determine 
the question. On that authority, we may unhesitatingly account them 
idolaters, worshippers of what ‘is nothing in the world ;” and not of the 
God revealed in the Bible. (1) Thus, the only hope which is left to 
the Socinian, is held on the same tenure as the hope of the Deist,—the 
forlorn hope that the Scriptures, which he rejects, are not true; for 
if those texts they reject, and those books which they hold of no autho- 
rity be established, then this whole charge, and its consequences, lie full 
against them. 

4. Dr. Priestley objects. “that no fact in nature, nor any one pur- 
pose of morals, requires this doctrine.” The first part of the objection 
is futile and trifling, if he meant that the facts of nature do not require 
this doctrine for their philosophical illustration ; for who seeks the ex- 
plication of natural phenomena in theological doctrines? But there is 
one view in which even right views of the facts of nature depend upon 
proper views of the Godhead. All nature has a theological reason, and 
a theological end; and its interpretation in these respects, rests wholly 
upon the person and office of our Lord. All things were made by the 
Son and for him; a theological view of the natural world, which is large 
or contracted, emphatic or spiritless, according to the conceptions which 
we form of the Son of God, “ by whom, and for whom”? it was built, and 
is preserved. ‘The reasca why the present circumstances of the natural 
world are, as before shown, neither wholly perfect, nor without large 
remains of original perfection; neither accordant with the condition of 
condemned, nor of innocent creatures ; but adapted only to such a state 
of man as the redeeming scheme supposes; cannot, on the Socinian ~ 
hypothesis, be discovered; for that redeeming scheme depends for its 
character upon our views of the person of Christ. Without a settled 
opinion on these points, we are therefore, in this respect also, without 
the key to a just and full explanation of the theological character of 
our present residence, the world. 

Another relation of the natural world to theology, lies in its duration. 
It was made for Christ; and the reason which determines that it shal] 
be burned up centres in him. He is appointed judge, and shall termi- 
nate the present scene of things, by destroying the frame of the visible 
universe, when the probation of its inhabitants shall have expired 


(1) To this purpose, Witsius, who shows that there can be neither religion, 
nor worship, unless the trinity be acknowledged. ‘Nulla etiam religio est, nisi 
quis verum Deum colat; non colit verum Deum, sed cerebri sui figmentum, qui 
non adorat in wquali divinitatis majestate Patrem, Filium, et Spiritam Sanctum. 
I nunc, et doctrinam eam ad prazin inutilem esse clama, sine qua nulla Fidei 
aut, Pieratis Christiane prazis esse potest.” 


SECOND. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, 455 


I beg the reader to turn to the remarks before made on the reason of a 
general judgment being found in the fact, that man is under grace, and 
aot strict Jaw ; and the argument offered to show, that if we were under 
a covenant of mere obedience, no cause for such an appointment, as 
that of a general judgment, would be obvious. If those views be cor. 
rect, then the reason, both of a genera] judgment and the final destruc. 
tion of the world, is to be found in the system of redemption, and 
consequently in such views of the person of Christ, as are not found in 
the Socinian scheme. The conclusion therefore is, that as “to facts in 
nature,” even they are intimately connected, in several very important 
respects, which no wise man can overlook, with the doctrine of the 
trinity. Socinianism cannot explain the peculiar physical state of the 
world as connected with a state of trial; and the general judgment, 
and the “ end of all things,” bear no relation to its theology. 

The connection of the orthodox doctrine with morals is, of course, 
still more direct and striking; and dim must have been that intellectual 
eye which could not discern that, granting to the believers in the trinity 
their own principles, its relation to morals is vital and essential. Whe- 
ther those principles are supported by the Scripture, is another con- 
sideration. If they could be disproved, then the doctrine ought to be. 
rejected on a higher ground than that here urged; but to attempt to 
push it aside, on the pretence of its having no connection with morals, 
was but.a very unworthy mode of veiling the case. For what are 
*‘morals,” but conformity to a Divine law, which law must take its cha- 
racter from its author? The trinitarian scheme is essentially connected 
with the doctrine of atonement ; and what is called the unitarian theory 
necessarily excludes atonement. From this arise opposite views of God, 
as the Governor of the world ; of the law under which we are placed ; 
of the nature and consequences of sin, the violation of that law ; points 
which have an essential relation to morals, because they affect the 
nature of the sanctions which accompany the law of God. He who denies 
the doctrine of the trinity, and its necessary adjunct, the atonement, 
makes sin a matter of comparatively trifling moment: God is not strict 
to punish it; and if punishment follow, it is not eternal. Whether, under 
these soft and easy views of the law of God, and of its transgression by 
sin, morals can have an equal sanction, or human conduct be equally 
restrained, are points too obvious to be argued; but a zubiect which 
involves views of the judicial character of God so opposite, and of the 
evil and penalty of offence, must be considered as standing in the most 
intimate relation with every question of morals. It is presumed, too, in 
the objection, that fazth, or, in other words, a firm belief in the testimony 
of God, is no part of morality. It is, however, sufficient to place this 
matter in a very different light if we recollect, that to believe ts so much 
a command that the highest sanction is connected with it “ He that 


455 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. - (PART 


believeth shall be saved, and he that, believeth not shall be damned.” 
Nothing, therefore, can be more important to us than to examine, with- 
out captiousness and the spirit of unbelief, what God hath revealed as 
the object of our faith, since the rejection of any revealed truth, under 
the influence of pride, whether of the reason or the heart; or through 
affectation of independence ; or love of the world; or any other corrupt 
motive ; must be certainly visited with punishment: the law of faith 
having the same authority, and the saine sanction as the law of works. 
It is, therefore, a point of duty to believe, because it is a point of obedt- 
ence, and hence St. Paul speaks of “ the obedience of faith.” For as 
it has been well observed, “ As to the nature of faith, it is a matter of 
obligation, as being that natural homage which the understanding or 
will pays to God in receiving and assenting to what he reveals upon his 
bare word or authority. It is a humiliation of ourselves, and a glorifi- 
cation of God.” (Norris on Christian Prudence.) It may be added, 
too, that faith, which implies a submission to God, is an important branch 
also of discipline. 

The objection, that there can be no faith where there is not sufficient 
evidence to command it, will not affect this conclusion. For when once 
the evidence of a Divine revelation is admitted, our duty to receive its 
doctrines does not rest upon the rational evidence we may have of their 
truth ; but upon the much easier and plainer evidence, that they are 
among the things actually revealed. He, therefore, who admits a Divine 
revelation, and rejects its doctrines, because he has not a satisfactory 
ational evidence of them, is more obviously criminal in his unbelief 
‘han he who rejects the revelation itself; for he openly debates the case 
with his Maker, a circumstance which indicates, in the most striking 
manner, a corrupt habit of mind. It is, indeed, often pretended, that 
such truths are rejected, not so much on this account, as that they do 
not appear to be the sense of the revelation itself. But this cannot be 
urged by those who openly lay it down as a principle, that a true reve. 
lation can contain nothing which to them appears unreasonable ; or that 
if it does, they are bound by the law of their nature not to admit it. 
Nor will it appear to be any other than an unworthy and dishonest pre- 
tence in al] cases where such kinds of criticism are resorted to, to alter 
the sense of a text, or to disprove its authority, as they would not allow 
in the case of texts supposed, by a partial construction, to favour their 
own opinion; or such as would be condemned by all learned and sober 
persons as hypercritical and violent, if applied to any other writings. 
It may also be added, that should any of the great qualities required in 
a serious and honest inquirer after truth have been uncultivated and 
unapplied, though a sincere conviction of the truth of an erroneous ¢on- 
clusion may exist, the guilt of unbelief would not be removed by such 
kind of sincerity. If there has been no anziety to be right; no prayer 


SECOND. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 457 


earnest and devout, offered to God, to be kept from error; if an humble 
sense of human liability to err has not been maintained; if diligence 
in looking out for proofs, and patience and perseverance in inquiry, have 
not been exerted ; if honesty in balancing evidence, and a firm resolution 
to embrace the truth, whatever prejudices or interests it may contradict 
or oppose, have not been felt; even sincerity in believing that to be true, 
which in the present state of a judgment determined, probably, before all 
the means of information have been resorted to, and, perhaps, under the 
perverting influences of a worldly or carnal state of mind, may appear 
to be so, will be no excuse. We are under “a law of faith,” and that 
law cannot be supposed to be so pliable and nugatory, as they who con- 
tend for the right of believing only what they please, would make it. 

These observations will show the connection of the doctrine of the 
trinity with morals, the point denied by Dr. Priestley. 

But, to leave this objection for views of a larger extent; our love to 
God, which is the sum of every duty, its sanctifying motive, and conse. 
quently a compendium of all true religion, is most intimately and even 
essentially connected with the doctrine in question. God’s love to us is 
the ground of our love to him; and by our views of that, it must be 
heightened or diminished. The love of God to man in the gift of his 
Son is that manifestation of it on which the Scriptures most emphatically 
and frequently dwell, and on which they establish our duty of loving 
God and one another. Now the estimate which we are to take of the 
love of God, must be the value of his gifts to us. His greatest gift is 
the gift of his Son, through whom alone we have the promise of ever- 
lasting life; but our estimate of the love which gives must be widely 
different, according as we regard the gift bestowed,—as a creature, or 
as a Divine person,—as merely a Son of man, or as the Son of God. 
If the former only, it is difficult to conceive in what this love, constantly 
represented as “ unspeakable” and astonishing, could consist. Indeed, 
if we suppose Christ to be a man only, on the Socinian scheme, or as 
an exalted creature, according to the Arians, God might be rather said 
to have “so loved his Son” than us, as to send him into the world, on a 
service so honourable, and which was to be followed by so high and vast 
1 reward, that he, a creature, should be advanced to universal dominion 
and receive universal homage as the price only of temporary sufferings, 
which, upon either the Socinian or Arian scheme, were not greater than 
shuse which many of his disciples endured after him, and, in many 
instances, not so great. (2) 


(2, ‘* Equidem rem attentius perpendenti liquebit, ex hypothesi sive Sociniana, 
sive Ariana, Deum in hoc negotio amorem et dilectionem suam potius in illum 
ipsum filium, quam erga nos hoinines ostendisse. Quid enim? Is qui Christus 
dicitur, ex mera Dei evdoxca et beneplacito in eam gratiam electus est, ut post 
brevem hic in terris Deo prestitam obedientiam, ex puro puto homine juxta Soet. 


458 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, - [PART 


For the same reason, the doctrine which denies our Lord's Divinity 
diminishes the love of Christ himself, takes away its generosity and de. 
votedness, presents it under views infinitely below those contained in the 
New Testainent, and weakens the motives which are drawn from it to 
excite ur gratitude and obedience. “If Christ was in the form of God, 
equal with God, and very God, it was then an act of infinite love and 
condescension in him to become man; but if he was no moie than a 
creature, it was no surprising condescension to embark in a work so 
glorious; such as being the Saviour of mankind, and such as would 
advance him to be Lord and Judge of the world, to be admired, reve- 
renced, and adored, both by men and angels.” ( Waterland’s Import- 
ance.) ‘To this it may be added, that the idea of disinterested generous 
love, such as the love of Christ is represented to be by the evangelists 
and the apostles, cannot be supported upon any supposition but that he 
was properly a Divine person. As a man and as a creature only, how- 
ever exalted, he would have profited by his exaltation; but, considered 
as Divine, Christ gained nothing. God is full and perfect—he is exalted 
“above blessing and praise :” and, therefore, our Lord, in that Divine 
nature, prays that he might be glorified with the Father, with the glory 
he had nerore. Not a glory which was new to him; not a glory 
heightened in its degree ; but the glory which he had with the Father 
“before the world was.” In a manner mysterious to us, even as to his 
Divine nature, “ he emptied himself—he humbled himself ;” but in that 
nature he returned to a glory which he had before the world was. The 
whole, therefore, was in him generous disinterested love, ineffable and 
affecting condescension. The heresy of the Socinians and Arians 
totally annihilates, therefore, the true character of the love of Christ, 
“so that,” as Dr. Sherlock well observes, “to deny the Divinity of 
Christ, alters the very foundations of Christianity, and destroys all the 
powerful arguments of the love, humality, and condescension of our Lord, 
which are the peculiar motives of the Gospel.” (Defence of Stalling. 
fleet.) 

But it is not only in this view that the denial of the Divinity of our 
Lord would alter the foundation of the Christian scheme, but in others 
equally essential: For, 

1. The doctrine of satisfaction or atonement depends upon his Divi- 
nity ; and it is, therefore, consistently denied by those who reject the 
former. So important, however, is the decision of this case, that the 
very terms of our salvation, and the ground of our hope, are atlected 


by it. 


nistas, sive ex mera et mutabili creatura, ut Ario-manite dicunt, Deus ipee fieret, 
ac divinos honores, non modo a nobis hominibus sed etiam ab ipsis angelis atque 
archangelis sibi tribuendos assequeretur, adeoque in alias vreaturas omnes domi. 
nium atque imperium obtineret.” (Bull. Jud. Eecl. Cuthol.) 


bECOND.} THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, 459 


The Arians, now however nearly extinct, admitted the doctrine of 
atonement, though inconsistently. “ No creature could merit from God, 
ar do works of supererogation. If it be said that God might accept it 
as he pleased, it may be said upon the same principle, that he might 
accept the blood of bulls and of goats. Yet the apostle tells that i is 
no possible that the blood of bulls and of geats should take away sin ; 
which: words resolve the satisfaction, not merely into God’s free accept- 
ance, but into the intrinsic value of the sacrifice.” (Waterland’s Import. 
ance.) Hence the Scriptures so constantly connect the atonement with 
the character,—the very Divinity of the person suffering. It was Jeho. 
vah who was pierced, Zech. xii, 11; God who purchased the Church 
with his own blood, Acts xx, 28. It was . As¢rorns the high Lord, that 
bought us, 2 Pet. ii, 1. It was the Lord of glory that was crucified, 
1 Cor. ii, 8. 

It is no small presumption of the impossibility of holding, with any 
support from the common sense of mankind, the doctrine of atonement 
with that of an inferior Divinity, that these opinions have so uniformly 
slided down into a total denial of it, and by almost all persons, except 
those who have retained the pure faith of the Gospel, Christ is regarded 
as a man only; and no atonement, in any sense, is allowed to have 
been made by his death. ‘The terms, then, of human salvation are 
entirely different on one scheme and on the other; and with respect to 
their advocates, one is “under law,” the other “under grace ;” one 
takes the cause of his own salvation into his own hands to manage it as 
he is able, and to plead with God, either that he is just, or that he may 
be justified by his own penitence and acts of obedient virtue ; the other 
pleads the meritorious death and intercession of his Saviour, in his name 
and mediation makes his requests known unto God, and asks a justifi- 
cation by faith, and a renewal of heart by the Holy Ghost. One stands 
with all his offences before his Maker, and in his own person, without a 
mediator and advocate; the other avails himself of both. A question 
which involves such consequences is surely not a speculative one; but 
deeply practical and vital, and must be found to be so in its final issue. 

2 The manner in which the evil of sin is estimated must be very dif- 
ferent, on these views of the Divine nature respectively ; and this is a 
consequence of a directly practical nature. Whatever lowers in men a 
sense of what an apostle calls “ the exceeding sinfulness of sin,” weakens 
the hatred and horror of it among men, and by consequence encourages 
it. In the Socinian view, transgressions of the Divine law are all 
regarded as venial, or, at most, to be subjected to slight and temporary 
punishment. In the orthodox doctrine, sin is an evil so great in itself, 
so hateful to God, so injurious in its effects, so necessary to be restrained 
by punishment, that it dooms the offender to eternal exclusion from God, 
and to positive endless punishment, and could only be forgiven throagh 


160 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. - [PART 


a sacrifice of atonement, so 2xtraordinary as that of the eath of the 
Divine Son of God. By these means, forgiveness only could be pro- 
mised; and the neglect of them, in order to pardon and sanctification 
too, aggravates the punishment, and makes the final visitation of justice 
the more terrible. 

3. It totally changes the character of Christian experience. Those 
strong and painful emotions of sorrow and alarm, which characterize 
the descriptions and example of rErpNTaNCeE in the Scriptures, are 
totally incongruous and uncalled for, upon the theory which denies 
man’s lost condition, and his salvation by a process of redemption. 
Farru, too, undergoes an essential change. It is no longer faith im 
Christ. His docirine or his mission are its objects; but not, as the New 
Testament states it, his person as a surety, a sacrifice, a mediator ; and 
much less than any thing else can it be called, in the language of Scrip 
ture, ‘ fazih in his BLoop,” a phrase utterly incapable of an interpre. 
tation by Socinians. Nor is it possible to offer up PRAYER to God in 
the name of Christ, thuugh expressly enjoined upon his disciples, in any 
sense which would not justify all the idolatry of the Roman Church, in 
availing themselves of the names, the interests, and the merits of saints. 
In a Socinian, this would even be more inconsistent, because he denies 
the doctrine of mediation in any sense which would intimate, that a 
benevolent God may not be immediately approached by his guilty but 
penitent creatures. Lover to Christ, which is made so eminent a grace 
in internal and experimental Christianity, changes also its character. 
It cannot be supreme, for that would be to break the first and great 
command, “ ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,” if 
Christ hinself be not that Lord our God. It must be love of the same 
kind we feel to creatures from whom we have received any benefit, and 
a passion, therefore, to be guarded and restrained, lest it should become 
excessive and wean our hearts and thoughts from God. But surely it 
is not under such views that love to Christ is represented in the Serip- 
tures; and against its excess, as against creaturely attachments, we 
have zertainly no admonition, no cautions. The love of Christ to us 
also as a motive to generous service, sufferings, and death, for the sake 
of others, loses all its force and application. ‘“ The love of Christ con- 
siraineth us; for we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all 
dead.” ‘That love of Christ which constrained the apostle was a love 
which led him to die for men. St. John makes the duty of dying for 
our brother obligatory upon all Christians, if called to it, and grounds it 
upon the same fact. “ He laid down his life for us, and we cught to 
lay down our lives tor our brethren.” The meaning, doubtless, is in 
order to save them; and though men are saved by Christ’s dying for 
them, in a very ditierent sense from that in which they can be saved by 
our dying in the cause of instructing, and thus instrumentally saving 


SECOND. | THECLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 46) 


each other; yet the a~gument is founded upon the necessary connection 
which there is between the death of Christ and the salvation of men. 
But, on the Socinian scheme, Christ did, in no sense, die for men, no, 
not in their general mode of interpreting such passages, “ for the benefit 
of men :” for what benefit, independent of propitiation, which Socinians 
deny, do men derive from the voluntary death of Christ, considered as 

mere human instructer? If it be said his death was an example, it was 
not specially and peculiarly so; for both prophets and apostles have 
died: with resignation and fortitude. If it be alleged, that it was to con- 
firm his doctrine, the answer is, that, in this view, it was nugatory, 
because it had been confirmed by undoubted miracles. If that he might 
confirm his mission by his resurrection, this might as well have followed 
from a natural as from a violent death; and beside the benefit which 
men derive from him, is, by this notion, placed in his resurrection, and 
not in his death, which is always exhibited in the New. Testament with 
marked and striking emphasis. ‘The motive to generous sacrifices of 
ease and life, in behalf of men, drawn from the death of Christ, have, 
therefore, no existence whenever his Godhead and sacrifice are denied. 

4. ‘The general and habitual exercises of the affections of Trust, 
HOPE, Joy, &c, toward Christ, are all interfered with by the Socinian 
doctrine. ‘This has, in part, been stated; but “if the Redeemer were 
not omnipresent and omniscient, could we be certain that he always 
hears our prayers, and knows the source and remedy of all our miseries ? 
If he were not all-merciful, could we be certain he must always be will- 
ing to pardon and relieve us? If he were not all-powerful, could we be 
sure that he must always be able to support and strengthen, to enlighten 
and direct us? Of any being less than God, we might suspect that his 
purposes might waver, his promises fail, his existence itself, perhaps, 
terminate ; for of every created being, the existence must be dependent 
and terminable.” (Dr. Graves’s Scriptural Proofs of the Trinity.) 

The language too, I say not of the Church of Christ in all ages, for 
that has been formed upon her faith, but of the Scriptures themselves, 
must be altered and brought down to these inferior views. No dying 
saint can say, ‘“ Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” if he be a man like our- 
selves; and the redeemed neither in heaven nor in earth, can dare to 
associate a creature so with God in Divine honours and solemn worship, 
as to unite in the chorus, “ Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, 
be unto 111™ that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, for ever !” 

The same essential changes must be made in the doctrine of Divine 
agency, in the heart of man, and in the Church, and the same confusion 
introduced into the language of Scripture. “Our salvation by Christ 
does not consist only in the expiation of our sins, &c, but in communication 
of Divine grace and power, to renew and sanctify us: and this is every 
where in Scripture attributed to the Ho’y Spirit, as his peculiar office in 


4{#Q THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, - [PARI 


the economy of man’s salvation: it must therefore make a fundamental 
change in the doctrine of Divine grace and assistance, to deny the 
Divinity of the Holy Spirit. For can a creature be the universal spring 
and fountain of Divine grace and life? Can a finite creature be a kind 
of universal soul to the whole Christian Church, and to every sincere 
member of it? Can a creature make such close application to our minds, 
know our thoughts, set bounds to our passions, inspire us with new affec. 
tions and desires, and be more intimate to us than we are to ourselves? 
If a creature be the only instrument and principle of grace, we shall 
soon be tempted either to deny the grace of God, or to make it only an 
external thing, and entertain very mean conceits of it. All those 
miraculous gifts which were bestowed upon the apostles and primitive 
Christians, for the edification of the Church ; all the graces of the Chris. 
tian life, are the fruits of the Spirit. ‘The Divine Spirit is the principle 
of immortality in us, which first gave life to our souls, and will, at the ° 
last day, raise our dead bodies out of the dust ; works which sufficiently 
proclaim him to be God, and which we cannot heartily believe, in the 
Gospel notion, if he be not.” (Sherlock’s Vindication.) All this has 
been felt so forcibly by the deniers of the Divinity of the Holy Spirit, 
that they have escaped only by taking another leap down the gulf of 
error; and, at present, the Socinians deny that there is any Holy Ghost, 
and resolve the whole into a figure of speech. 

But the importance of the doctrine of the holy trinity may be finally 
argued from the manner in which the denial of it would affect the creda 
of the Holy Scriptures themselves ; for if this doctrine be not contained 
in them, their tendency to mislead is obvious. Their constant language 
is so adapted to deceive, and even to compel the belief of falsehood, even 
in fundamental points, and to lead to the practice of idolatry itse'f, that 
they would lose all claim to be regarded as a revelation from the God 
of truth, and ought rather to be shunned than to be studied. A great 
part of the Scriptures is directed against idolatry, which is declared to be 
‘that abominable thing which the Lord hateth ;” and in pursuance of this 
design, the doctrine that there is but one God is laid down .in the 
most explicit terms, and constantly confirmed by appeals to his works. 
Ihe very first command in the decalogue is, “Thou shalt have no other 
(sods before me ;”’ and the sum of the law, as to our duty to God, is that 
we love nim “with all our heart, and mind, and soul, and strength.’ 
If the doctrine of a trinity of Divine persons in the unity of the Godhead 
be consistent with all this, then the style and manner of the Scriptures 
are in perfect accordance with the moral ends they propose, and the 
truths in which they would instruct mankind; but if the Son and the 
Holy Spirit are creatures, then is the language of the sacred books 
most deceptive and dangerous. For how is it to be accounted for, in 
that case, that, in the Old Testament, God should be spoken of in plural 


SECOND. |] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 463 


terms, and that this plurality should be restricted to three? How is it 
that the very name Jehovah should be given to each of them, and that re. 
peatedly and on the most solemn occasions? How is it that the promised, 
incarnate Messiah should be invested, in the prophecies of his advent, 
with the loftiest attributes of God, and that works infinitely superhuman, 
and Divine honours should be predicted of him? and that acts and cha- 
racters of unequivocal Divinity, according to the common apprehension 
of mankind, should be ascribed to the Spirit also? How is it, that, in the 
New Testament, the name of Ged should be given to both, and that 
without any intimation that it is to be taken in an inferior sense? That 
the creation and conservation of all things should be ascribed to Christ ; 
that he should be worshipped by angels and by men; that he should be 
represented as seated on the throne of the universe, to receive the adora- 
tious of all creatures ; and that in the very form of initiation by baptism 
into his Church, itself a public and solemn profession of faith, the bap- 
tism is enjoined to be performed in the one name of the Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost? One God and two creatures! As though the very door 
of entrance into the Christian Church should have been purposely made 
the gate of the worst and most corrupting error ever introduced among 
mankind,—trust and worship in creatures as God ; the error which has 
spread darkness and moral desolation over the whole pagan world! 
And here it cannot be said that the question is begged, that more is 
taken for granted than the Socinians will allow ; for this argument does 
not rest at all upon what the deniers of our Lord’s Divinity understand 
by all these terms, and what interpretations may be put upon them. 
This is the popular view of the subject which has just been drawn from 
the Scriptures ; and they themselves acknowledge it by resorting to the 
arts and labours of far-fetched criticism, in order to attach to these pas- 
sages of Scripture a sense different to the obvious and popularone. But 
it is not merely the popular sens: of Scripture. It is so taken, and has 
been taken in all ages, by the wisest men and most competent critics, to 
be the only consistent sense of the sacred volume ; a circumstance which 
still more strongly proves, that if the Scriptures were written on Soct- 
nian principles, they are more unfortunately expressed than any book in 
the world; and they can, on no account, be considered a Divine revela- 
tion, not because of their obscurity, for they are not obscure, but because 
terms are used in them which convey a sense different from what the 
writers intended, if indeed they were Socinians. But their evidences 
prove them to be a revelation of truth from the God of truth, and they 
cannot therefore be so written as to lead men, who use only ordinary 
care, into fundamental error ; and the conclusion therefore must inevita. 
bly be, that if we must admit either on the one hand what is so derogatory 
to the Scriptures, and so subversive of all confidence in them, or, on the 
other, that the doctrine of the Divinity of the Son and Holy Spirit 


464 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. ~ (PART 


is there explicitly taught, there is no medium between apsolute infidelity 
and the acknowledgment of our Lord’s Divinity ; and indeed, to adopt 
the representation of a great divine, it is rather to rave than to reason, 
to suppose, that he whom the Scriptures teach us to regard as the Sa- 
viour of our souls, and as our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and 
redemption ; he who hears our prayers, and is always present with hiss 
Church throughout the world, who sits at the right hand of Goc, in the 
glory of his Father, and who shall come at the last day in glory and 
majesty, accompanied with ministering angels, to judge all mankind 
and to bring to light the very secrets of their hearts, should be a mere 
man or a created being of any kind. (3) 

I close this view of the importance of the doctrine of the trinity by 
the observations of Dr. Waterland :— 

“While we consider the doctrine of the trinity as interwoven with 
the very frame and texture of the Christian religion, it appears to me 
natural to conceive that the whole scheme and economy of man’s 
redemption was laid with a principal view to it, in order to bring man- 
kind gradually into an acquaintance with the three Divine persons, one 
God blessed for ever. 1 would speak with all due modesty, caution, and 
reverence, as becomes us always in what concerns the unsearchable 
councils of Heaven: but I say, there appears to me none so natural, or 
. so probable an account of the Divine dispensations, from first to last, 
as what I have just mentioned, namely, that such a redemption was 
provided, such an expiation for sins required, such a method of sancti- 
fication appointed, and then revealed, that so men might know that 
there are three Divine persons, might be apprized how infinitely the 
world is indebted to them, and might accordingly be both instructed and 
inclined to love, honour, and adore them here, because that must be 4 
considerable part of their employment and happiness hereafter.” (Jmpor. 
tance of the Doctrine of the Trinity.) 

In order to bring this great controversy in such an order before the 
reader, as may assist him to enter with advantage into it, I shall first 
carefully collect the leading testimonies of Scripture on the doctrine of 


(3) Occovwyra, que ipsi tribuitur, $eo\oy:av necessario supponit, ipsumque omnine 
statuit. Quid enim? Messiam sive Christum predicant sacre nostre litere et 
credere nos profitemur omnes, qui sit animarum sospitator, qui nobis sit sapientia, 
justitia, sanctificatio et redemptio—qui preces suorum, ubivis sacrosane tum ejus 
nomen invocantium, illico exaudiat—qui ecclesie sue per universum terrarum 
orbem disseminate, semper presto sit—qui Deo Patri, avvOpoves, et in eadem sede 
collocatus sit—qui denique, in exitu mundi, immensa gloria et majestate refulgens, 
angelis ministris stipatus, veniet orbem judicaturus, non modo facta omnia, sed 
et cordis secreta omnium quotquot fuere hominum in lucem proditurus, &ce. 
Ilzccine omnia in purum hominem, aut creaturam aliquam competere ? Fidenter 
dico, qui ita sentiat, non modo contra Fidem, sed et rationem ipsam insanire. 


Bull. Judic. Eccl. Cath.) 


SECOND.| THROLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 495 


the trinity and the Divinity of the Son and Holy Spirit,—adduce the opi- 
ulons of the Jewish and Christian Churches,—answer objections,—explain 
se chief modern heresies on this subject, and give their Scriptural con- 
futation. An observation or two on the difficulties in which the doctrine 
of a trinity of persons in the unity of one undivided Godhead is said te 
involve us, may properly close this chapter. 

Mere difficulty in conceiving of what is wholly proper and peculiar 
to God, forms no objection to a doctrine. It is more rationally to be 
considered as a presumption of its truth, since in the nature of God 
there must be mysteries far above the reach of the human mind. Al! 
his natural attributes, though of some of them we have images in our. 
selves, are utterly incomprehensible ; and the manner of his existence 
cannot be less so. All attempts, however, to show that. this great 
doctrine implies a contradiction, have failed. A contradiction is only 
where two contraries are predicated of the same thing, and in the same 
respect. Let this be kept in view, and the sophisms resorted to on this 
point by the adversaries of the faith, will be easily detected. They 
urge, that the same thing cannot be three and one, that is, if the propo. 
sition has any meaning at all, not in the same respect ; the three persons 
are not one person, and the one God is not three Gods. But it is no con- 
tradiction to say, that in different respects the three may be one ; that is, 
that in respect of persons, they shall be three, and in respect of (rod- 
head, essence, or nature, they shall be one. ‘The manner of the thing 
is a perfectly distinct question, and its mcomprehensibility proves 
nothing but that we are finite creatures, and not God. As for diffcul- 
ties, we shall certainly not be relieved by running either to the Arian or 
the Socinian hypothesis. ‘The one ascribes the first formation and the 
perpetual government of the universe, not to the Deity, but to tne wis- 
dom and power of a creature ; for, however exalted the Arian inferior 
Deity may be, he is a creature still. The other makes a mere man 
the creator of all things. For whatever is meant by “the Word in St. 
John’s Gospel, it is the same Word of which the evangelist says, that 
all things were made by it, and that itself was made flesh. If this 
Word be the Divine attribute wisdom, then that attribute in the degree 
which was equal to the formation of the universe, in this view of the 
Scripture doctrine, was conveyed entire into the mind of a mere man, 
the son of a Jewish carpenter! A much greater difhculty, in my appre- 
hension, than any that is to be found in the catholic faith.” (Horsley’s 
Letiers.) 

Vor. I. 30 


466 THEOL 0GICAL INSTITUTES. \PART 


~~ 


CHAPTER IX. 


Triniry.—Scripture Testimony. 


In adducing the doctrine of a trinity of Divine persons in the unity 
of the Godhead from the sacred volume, by exhibiting some of its 
aumerous and decisive testimonies as to this being the mode in which 
the Divine nature subsists ; the explicit manner in which it is there laid 
down, that there is but onze God, must again be noticed. 

This is the foundation and the key stone of the whole fabric of Scrip, 
tural theology ; and every argument in favour of the trinity flows 
from this principle of the absolute unrry of God, a principle which the 
heresies at which we have glanced fancy to be inconsistent with the 
orthodox doctrine. 

The solemn and unequivocal manner in which the unity of God is 
stated as a doctrine, and is placed as the foundation of all true religion, 
whether devotional or practical, need not again be repeated ; and it is 
here sufficient to refer to the chapter on the unity of God. 

Of this one Ged, the high and peculiar, and, as it has been truly 
called, the appropriate name, is Jenovan ; which, like all the Hebrew 
names of God, is not an insignificant and accidental term, but a name 
of revelation, a name adopted by God himself for the purpose of making 
known the mystery of his nature. To what has been already said on 
this appellation, | may add that the most eminent critics derive it from 
mn, fuit existit ; which in Kal signifies to be, and in Hiphel to cause to 
be. Buxtorf, in his definition, includes both these ideas, and makes it 
signify a being existing from himself from everlasting to everlasting, and 
communicating existence to others, and adds, that it signifies the Being 
who is, and was, and is to come. Its derivation has been variously 
stated by critics, and some fanciful notions have been formed of the 
import of its several letters; but in this idea of absolute existence all 
agree. “It is acknowledged by all,” says Bishop Pearson, “ that m1n>is 
from 17 or nn, and God’s own interpretation proves. no less, Exodus 
lil, 14. Some contend that futurition is essential to the name, yet all 
agree the root signifieth nothing but essence or existence, that is, ro eva 
or urapyév.” (Exposition of the Creed.) No appellation of the Divine 
Being could therefore be more distinctive, than that which tmports 
independent and eternal being; and for chis reason probably it was, 
that the Jews, up to a very high antiquity, had a singular reverence fon 
it; carried, it is true, to a superstitious scrupulosity ; but thereby 
showing that it was the name which unveiled, to the thoughts of those 
t: whom it was first given, the awful and overwhelming giories of a 


FECONL.) | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 467 


self-existent Being,—the very unfathomable depths of his eternal God. 
head. (4) 

In examining what the Scriptures teach of this self-existent and eter- 
nal Being, our attention is first arrested by the important fact, that this 
one Jehovah is spoken of under plural appellations, and that not once or 
twice, but in a countless number of instances. So that the Hebrew names 
of God, acknowledged by all to be expressive and declaratory of some 
peculiarity or excellence of his nature, are found in several cases in the 
plural as well as in the singular form, and one of them, ALEIM, gene- 
rally so; and notwithstanding it was so fundamental and distinguishing 
an article of the Jewish faith, in opposition to the polytheism of almost 
ali other nations, there was but one living and true God. 1 give a few 
instances. Jehovah, if it has not a plural form, has more than one 
personal application. “Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon 
Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.” We 
have here the visible Jehovah who had talked with Abraham, raining 
the storm of vengeance from another Jehovah, out of heaven, and who 
was therefore invisible. Thus we have two Jehovahs expressly men. 
tioned, “ the Lorp rained from the Lorp,” and yet we have it most 
solemnly asserted in Deut. vi, 4, “ Hear, O Israel, Jehovah our God is 
one Jehovah.” 

The very first name in the Scriptures under which the Divine Being 
1s introduced to us as the Creator of heaven and earth, is a plural one, 
to‘nbs», ALerm; and to connect in the same singular manner as in the 
foregoing instance, plurality with unity, it is the nominative case to a 
verb singular. ‘Inthe beginning, Gops created the heavens and the 
earth.” Of this form innumerable instances occur in the Old Testa- 
ment. That the word is plural, is made certain by its being often 
joined with adjectives, pronouns, and verbs plural; and yet when it can 
mean nothing else than the true God, it is generally joined in its plural 
form with verbs singular. To render this still more striking, the Aleim 
are said to be Jehovah, and Jehovah the Aleim: thus in Psalm ec, 3, 
“Know ye, that Jehovah, he, the Aleim, he hath made us, and not 
we ourselves.” And in the passage before given, “ Jehovah our ALEIM, 
(Gods,) is one Jehovah.” 5x, AL, the mighty one, another name of 
God, has its plural ‘5x, Arm, the mighty ones. The former is ren- 
dered by Trommius Qeo¢, the latter @zo. vay, ABrR, the potent one. 
has the plural o-v2x, Aprrim, the potent ones. Man did eat the 
bread of the Abzrim, “ angels’ food,” conveys no idea ; the manna was 
the bread provided miraculously, and was therefore called the food 


(4) Maimonides tells us, that it was not lawful to utter this name, except in the 
sanctuary, and by the priests. ‘‘ Nomen, quod, ut nosti, non proferre licet, nisi 
in sanctuario, et a sacerdotibus Dei sanctis, solum in benedictione sacerdotum, ut 
et a sacerdote magno in die jejunii.” 


468 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, - /  FPART 


of the powerful ones, of them who, have power over all nature, the 
one God. 

o’311x, Avon, Is the plural form of }11", Adon, a governor. “IfI be 
Adonim, masters, where is my fear?” Mal. i, 6. Many other instances 
might be given, as, ‘‘ Remember thy Creators in the days of thy youth.” 
“The knowledge of the Holy Ones is understanding.” “There be 
higher than they.” Heb. High Ones; and in Daniel, “ the Watchers 
and the Holy Ones.” 

Other plural forms of speech also occur when the one true God only 
is spoken of. ‘ And God said, Let us make man in our own image, 
after our likeness.” ‘And the Lorp God said, Behold the man is 
become like one of us.” ‘And the Lorp said, Let us go down.” — 
“ Because there Gop appeared to him.” Heb. God they appeared, the 
verb being plural. ‘These instances need not be multiplied: they are 
the common forms of speech in the sacred Scriptures, which no criti. 
cism has been able to resolve into mere idioms, and which only the 
doctrine of a plurality of persons in the unity of the Godhead can satis- 
factorily explain. If they were mere idioms, they could not have been 
misunderstood by those to whom the Hebrew tongue was native, to 
imply plurality ; but of this we have sufficient evidence, which shall 
be adduced when we speak of the faith of the Jewish Church. They 
have been acknowledged to form a striking singularity in the Hebrew 
language, even by those who have objected to the conclusion drawn 
from them; and the question, therefore, has been to find an hypothesis, 
which should account for a peculiarity, which is found in no other lan- 
guage, with the same circumstances. (5) 

Some have supposed angels to be associated with God when these 
plural forms occur. For this there is no foundation in the texts them. 
selves, and it is beside a manifest absurdity. Others, that the style of 
royalty was adopted, which is refuted by two considerations—that al. 
mighty God in other instances speaks in the singular and not in the plural 
number ; and that this was not the style of the sovereigns of the earth 
when Moses or any of the sacred penmen composed their writings; no 
instance of it being found in any of the inspired books. _A third opinion 
is, that the plural form of speaking of God was adopted by the Hebrews 
from their ancestors, who were polytheists, and that the ancient theo 


(5) The argument for the trinity drawn from the plural appeillations given te 
God in the Hebrew Scriptures, was opposed by the younger Buxtorf; who yet 
admits that this argument should not altogether be rejected among Chris. 
tians, ‘‘ for upon the same principle on which not a few of the Jews refer this 
emphatical application of the plural number to 2 plurality of powers or of 
influences, or of operations, that is, ad extra; why may we not refer it, ad intra, 
to a plurality of persons and to personal works? Yea, who certainty knows 
what that was which the ancient Jews understood bv this plurality ef powers 
and faculties ?” 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 469 


ogical term was retained after the unity of God was acknowledged. 
This assumes what is totally without proof, that the ancestors of the 
Hebrews were polytheists; and could that be made out, it would leave 
it still to be accounted for, why other names of the Deity equally ancient, 
for any thing that appears to the contrary, are not also plural, and es. 
pecially the high name of Jehovah ; and why, more particularly the very 
appellation in question, Aleim, should have a singular form also, ns in 
the same language. The grammatical reasons which have been offered 
are equally unsatisfactory. If then no hypothesis explains this pecu- 
liarity, but that which concludes it to indicate that mode of the Divine 
existence which was expressed in later theology by the phrase, a trinity 
of persons, the inference is too powerful to be easily resisted, that these 
plural forms must be considered as intended to intimate the plurality of 
persons in essential connection with one supreme and adorable Deity. 
This argument, however, taken alone, powerful as-it has often been 
justly deemed, does not contain the strength of the case. For natural 
as it is to expect, presuming this to be the mode of the Divine existence, 
that some of his names which, according to the expressive and simple 
character of the Hebrew language, are descriptions of realities, and that 
some of the modes of expression adopted even in the earliest revelations, 
should carry some intimation of a fact, which. as essentially connected 
with redemption, the future complete revelation of the redeeming scheme 
was intended fully to unfold; yet, were these plural titles and forms of 
construction blotted out, the evidence of a plurality of Divine persons in 
the Godhead would still remain in its strongest form. For that evidence 
is not merely, that God has revealed himself under plural appellations, 
nor that these are constructed with sometimes singular and sometimes 
plural forms of speech; but that three persons, and three persons only 
are spoken of in the Scriptures under Divine titles, each having the 
peculiar attributes of Divinity ascribed to him; and yet that the first and 
leading principle of the same book, which speaks thus of the character 
and works of these persons, should be, that there is but ont God. ‘This 
point being once established, it may be asked which of the hypotheses, 
the orthodox, the Arian, or the Socinian, agrees best with this plain and 
explicit doctrine of Holy Writ. Plain and explicit, I say, not as to the 
mode of the Divine existence, not as to the comprehension of it, but as 
to this particular, that the doctrine itself is plainly stated in the Scriptures. 
Let this point then be examined, and it will be seen even that the very 
number three has this pre-eminence ; that the application of these names 
and powers is restrained to it, and never strays beyond it; and that those 
who confide in the testimony of God, rather than in the opinions of men, 
have sufficient Scriptural reason to distinguish their faith from the unbe 
‘ef of others by avowing themselves 77initarians. (6) } 


(6) The word rgas, trinitas, came into use in the second century. 


470 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. — '\PART 


The solemu form of benediction, in which the Jewish high priests 
were commanded to bless the children of Israel, has in it this peculiar 
indication, and singularly answers to the form of benediction so general 
in the close of the apostolic epistles, and which so appropriately closes 
the solemn services of Christian worship. It is given in Numbers vi, 
24-27, 


Jehovah bless thee and keep thee: 
Jehovah make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee : 
Jehovah lift his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. 


If the three members of this form of benediction be attentively con. 
sidered, they will be found to agree respectively to the three persons 
taken in the usual order of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. 
The Father is the author of blessing and preservation, wlumination and 
grace are from the Son, illumination and peace from the Spirit, the 
teacher of truth and the Comforter. (Vide Jones’s Catholic Doctrine.) 

“The first member of the formula expresses the benevolent ‘love of 
God ;’ the father of mercies and fountain of all good: the second well 
comports with the redeeming and reconciling ‘ grace of our Lord Jesus 
Christ ;’ and the last is appropriate to the purity, consolation, and joy, 
which are received from the ‘communion of the Holy Spirit.’ ” (Smith’s 
Person of Christ.) 

The connection of certain specific blessings in this form of benedic- 
tion with the Jehovah mentioned three times distinctly, and those which 
are represented as flowing from the Father, Son, and Spirit in the apos- 
tolic form, would be a singular coincidence if it even stood alone; but 
the light of the same eminent truth, though not yet fully revealed, 
breaks forth from other partings of the clouds of the early morning of 
revelation. 

The inner part of the Jewish sanctuary was called the holy of holies, 
that is, the holy place of the Holy Ones; and the number of these is 
indicated, and limited to three, in the celebrated vision of Isaiah, and 
that with great explicitness. The scene of that vision is the holy place 
of the temple, and lies therefore in the very abode and residence of the 
Holy Ones, here celebrated by the seraphs who veiled their faces before 
them. And one cried unto another, and said, “ Holy, holy, holy is the 
Jiord of hosts.” This passage, if it stood alone, might be eluded by 
saying that this act of Divine adoration here mentioned, is merely em. 
phatic, or in the Hebrew mode of expressing a superlative ; thougl that is 
assumed, and by no means proved. It is however worthy of serivus notice, 
that this distinct trine act of adoration, which has been so often supposed 
to mark a plurality of persons as the objects of it, is answered by a voice 
from that excellent glory which overwhelmed the mind of the prophet 
when he was favoured with the vision, responding in the same language 


° 


SECOND. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 471 


of plurality in which the doxology of the seraphs is expressed. ‘ Also 
[ heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will 
go for us?” But this is not the only evidence that in this passage the 
Holy Ones, who were addressed each by his appropriate and equal 
designation of holy, were the three Divine subsistences in the Godhead. 
The being addressed is the “ Lord of hosts.” This all acknowledge 
to include the Father; but the Evangelist John, xii, 41, in manifest 
reference to this transaction, observes, “ These things said Esaias, when 
he saw his (Christ’s) glory and spake of him.” In this vision, therefore, 
we have the Son also, whose glory on this occasion the prophet is said 
to have beheld. Acts xxviii, 25, determines that there was also the 
presence of the Holy Ghost. ‘‘ Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias 
the prophet unto our fathers, saying, Go unto this people and say, Hear. 
ing ye shall hear and not understand, und seeing ye shall see and not 
perceive,” &c. These words, quoted from Isaiah, the Apostle Paul 
declares to have been spoken by the Holy Ghost, and Isaiah declares 
them to have been spoken on this very occasion by the “ Lord of hosts.” 
“And he said, Go and tell this people, Hear ye indeed and understand 
not, and see ye indeed but perceive not,” &c. 

Now let all these circumstances be placed together—rue piace, the 
holy place of the Holy Ones ; the repetition of the homage, 'rureEx times, 
Holy, holy, holy—-the onz Jehovah of hosts, to whom it was addressed, 
—the plural pronoun used by this onr Jehovah, us; the declaration of 
an evangelist, that on this occasion Isaiah saw the glory of Curisr; the 
declaration of St. Paul, that the Lord of hosts who spoke on that occa- 
sion was the Hoty Guosr; and the conclusion will not appear to be 
without most powerful authority, both circumstantial and declaratory, 
that the adoration, Holy, holy, holy, referred to the Divine three, in the 
one essence of the Lord of hosts. Accordingly, in the book of Revela- 
tions, where “the Lamb” is so constantly represented as sitting upon the 
Divine throne, and where he by name is associated with the Father, as 
the object of the equal homage and praise of saints and angels; this 
scene from Isaiah is transferred into the fourth chapter, and the “ living 
creatures,” the seraphim of the prophet, are heard in the same strain, 
and with the same ¢rine repetition, saying, “ Holy, holy, holy, Lord God 
Almghty, which was, and is, and is to come.’ Isaiah, xlviii, 16, also 
makes this threefold distinction and limitation. ‘And now the Lord 
God, and his Spirit, hath sent me.” ‘The words are manifestly spoken 
by Messiah, who declares himself sent by the Lord God, and by his Spirit. 
Some render it, hath sent me and his Sprrit, the latter term Leing also 
in the accusative case. This strengthens the application, by bringing 
the phrase nearer to that so often used by our Lord in his discourses, 
who speaks of himself and the Spirit, being sent by the Father. “The 
Father which sent me—the Comforter whom I will send unto yeu from 


272 ; THEOLOGICAL INSLITUTES, ~ [PART 


the Father, who proceedeth from the Father.” Isaiah xxxiv, 16, “Seek 
ye out of the book of the Lord, and read, fer my mouth it hath com. 
manded, and u1s Sprrir it hath gathered them.” «Here is one person 
speaking of the Spirit, another person.” (Jones on the Trinity.) Hag. 
li, 5, 7, “I am with you, saith the Lord of hosts, according to the word 
that I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt, so my Spirit 
remaineth among you; fear ye not. For thus saith the Lord of hosts 
I will shake all nations, and the Desire of all nations shall come.” Here 
also we have three persons distinctly mentioned ; the Lord of hosts, his 
Spirit, and the Desire of all nations. 

_ Many other passages might be given, in which there is this change 
of persons, sometimes enumerating two, sometimes three, but never more 
than three, arrayed in these eminent and Divine characters. The pas- 
sages in the New Testament are familiar to every one: “ Baptizing 
them in the name of the Futher, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” 
“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the com- 
munion of the Holy Ghost,” with others in which the sacred three, and 
three only, are thus collocated as objects of equal trust and honour, and 
equally the fountain and the source of grace and benediction. 

On the celebrated passage in 1 John v, 7, “ There are three that bear 
record in heaven,” I say nothing, because authorities against its genuine- 
ness are found in the ranks of the orthodox, and among those who do 
not captiously make objections ; and because it would scarcely be fair 
to adduce it as a proof, unless the arguments on each side were exhibit- 
ed, which would lead to discussions which lie beside the design of this 
work, and more properly have their place in separate and distinct trea- 
tises. ‘The recent revival of the inquiry into the genuineness of this 
text, however, shows that the point is far from being critically settled 
against the passage, as a true portion of Holy Writ, and the argument 
from the context is altogether in favour of those who advocate it, the 
hiatus in the sense never having been satisfactorily supplied by those 
who reject it. ‘This is of more weight in arguments of this kind than is 
often allowed. As to the doctrine of the text, it has elsewhere abund- 
ant proof. 

It has now been shown, that while the unity of God is to be con, 
sidered a fundamental doctrine of the Scriptures, laid down with the 
utmost solemnity, and guarded with the utmost care, by precepts, by 
threatenings, by promises, by tremendous punishments of polytheism 
and idolatry among the Jews, the very names of God, as given in the 
revelation made of himself, have plural forms and are connected with 
plural modes of speech ; that other indications of plurality are given in 
various parts of Holy Writ; and that this plurality is restricted to three. 
On those texts, however, which in their terms denote a plurality and a 
_ trinity, the proof does not wholly or chiefly rest, and they have been 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 473 


only adduced as introductory to instances too numerous to be all ex. 
amined, in which fwo distinct persons are spoken of, sometimes connect- 
edly and sometimes separately, as associated with God in his perfections 
and incommunicable glories, and as performing works of unequivocal 
Divine majesty and infinite power, and thus together manifesting that 
tri-unity of the Godhead which the true Church has in all ages adore. 
and magnified. This is the great proof upon which the doctrine rests. 
The first of these two persons is the Son, the second the Spirit. Of the 
former, it will be observed that the titles of Jehovah, Lord, God, King, 
King of Israel, Redeemer, Saviour, and other names of God, are ascribed 
to him,—that he is invested with the attributes of eternity, omnipotence, 
ubiquity, infinite wisdon® holiness, goodness, &c,—that he was the 
Leader, the visible King, and the object of the worship of the Jews,— 
that he forms the great subject of prophecy, and is spoken of in the pre- 
dictions of the prophets in language, which if applied to. men or to angels 
would by the Jews have been considered not as sacred but idolatrous, 
and which, therefore, except that it agreed with their ancient faith, would 
totally have destroyed the credit of those writings,—that he is eminently 
known both in the Old Testament and in the New, as the Son of God, an 
appellative which is sufficiently proved to have been considered as im- 
plying an assumption of Divinity by the circumstance that, for asserting 
it, our Lord was condemned to die as a blasphemer by the Jewish san. 
hedrim,—that he became incarnate in our nature,—wrought miracles 
by his own original power, and not, as his servants, in the name of an- 
other,—that he authoritatively forgave sin,—that for the sake of his 
sacrifice, sin is forgiven to the end of the world, and for the sake of 
that alone,—that he rose from the dead to seal all these pretensions to 
Divinity,—that he is seated upon the throne of the universe, all power 
being given to him in heaven and in earth,—that his inspired apostles 
exhibit him as the Creator of all things visible and invisible ; as the 
true God and the eternal life; as the King eternal, immortal, invisible, 
the only wise God and our Saviour,—that they offer to him the highest 
worship,—that they trust in him, and command all others to trust in him 
for eternal life,—that he is the head over all things,—that angels wor- 
ship him and render him service,—that he will raise the dead at the 
last day,—judge the secrets of men’s hearts, and finally determine the 
everlasting state of the righteous and the wicked. 

This is the outline of Scriptural testimony as tc the Son. As to the 
Divine character of the Spirit, it is equally explicit. He too is called 
Jehovah ; Jehovah of hosts; God. Eternity, omnipotence, ubiquity, 
infinite wisdom, and other attributes of Deity, are ascribed to him. He is 
introduced as an agent in the work of the creation, and to him is ascribed 
the conservation of all living beings. He is the source of the inspira. 
tion of prophets and apostles ; the object of worship ; the efficient agent 


474 THEOLOGICAL INSCITUTLS. ~ [PART 


in illuminating, comforting, and sanctifying the souls of men. He makes 
intercession for the saints; quickens the dead, and, finally, he is asso- 
ciated with the Father and the Son, in the form of baptism into the one 
name of God, and in the apostolic form of benediction, as equally with 
them the source and fountain of grace and blessedness. These deci- 
sive points I shall proceed to establish by the express declarations of 
various passages, both of the Old and New Testament. When that is 
done, the argument will then be, that as on the one hand the doctrine 
of Scripture is, that there is but one Gop; and, on the other, that 
throughout both Testaments, three persons are, in unequivocal language, 
and by unequivocal circumstances, declared to be Divine ; the only con. 
clusion which can harmonize these otherwise @pposite, contradictory, and 
most misleading propositions, and declarations, is, that the THREE PER- 
SONS ARE ONE Gop. 

In the prevalent faith of the Christian Church, neither of these views 
is for a moment lost sight of. Thus it exactly harmonizes with the 
Scriptures, nor can it be charged with greater mystery than is assign. 
ahle to them. ‘The trinity is asserted, but the unity is not obscured ; 
the unity is confessed, but without denial of the trinity. No figures of 
speech, no unnatural modes of interpretation are resorted to, to recon. 
cile these views with human conceptions, which they must infinitely 
transcend. ‘This is the character of the heresies which have arisen on 
this subject. They all spring from the attempt to make this mystery 
of God conceivable by the human mind, and less a stone of stumbling 
to the pride of reason. On the contrary, “ the faith of God’s elect,” as 
embodied in the creeds and confessions of all truly evangelical Churches 
follow ihe example of the Scriptures in entirely overlooking these low 
considerations, and “declaring the thing as it is,” with all its mystery 
and incomprehensibleness, to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the 
Greeks foolishness. It declares “that we worship one God in trinity, 
and trinity in unity ; neither confounding the persons nor dividing the 
substance ; for there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, 
and another of the Holy Ghost; but the Godhead of the Father, of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost is all one; the glory equal, the majesty 
coeternal. So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost 
is God; and yet there are not three Gods, but one God.” (Athanasian 
Creed.) Or, as it is well expressed by an eminent modern, as great a 
master of reason and science as he was of theology: “ There is oue 
Divine nature or essence, common unto three persons, incomprehensibly 
united, and ineffably distinguished ; united in essential attributes, dis- 
tinguisned by peculiar idioms and relations ; all equally infinite in every 
Divine perfection, each different from the other in order and manner 
of subsistence ; that there is a mutual existence of one in all, and all in 
one ; a communication without any deprivation or diminution in the 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTIT¥ TES. 475 


communicant; an eternal generation, and-an eternal processioi ‘\ithout 
precedence or succession, without proper causality or dependence; a 
Father imparting his own, and a Son receiving his Father’s life, and a 
Spirit issuing from both, without any division or multiplication of essence. 
These are notions which may well puzzle our reason in conceiving how 
they agree; but ought not to stagger our faith in asserting that they 
are true ; for if the Holy Scripture teacheth us plainly, and frequently 
doth inculcate upon us, that there is but one true God ; if it as manifestly 
doth ascribe to the three persons of the blessed trinity, the same august 
names, the same peculiar characters, the same Divine attributes, the 
same superlatively admirable operauons of creation and providence; if it 
also doth prescribe to them the same supreme honours, services, praises, 
and acknowledgments to be paid to them all ; this may be abundantly 
enough to satisfy our minds, to stop our mouths, to smother all doubt 
and dispute about this high and holy mystery.” (Dr. Barrow’s Defence 
of the Trinity.) 

One observation more, before we proceed to the Scriptural evidence 
of the positions above laid down, shall close this chapter. The proof 
of the doctrine of the trinity, I have said, grcunds itself on the firm foun. 
dation of the Divine unity, and it closes with it ; and this may set the true 
believer at rest, when he is assailed by the sophistical enemies of his faith 
with the charge of dividing his regards, as he directs his prayers to one 
or other of the three persons of the Godhead. For the time at least, he 
is said to honour one to the exclusion of the others. The true Scriptural 
doctrine of the unity of God, will remove this objection. It is not the 
Socinian notion of unity. Theirs is the unity of one, ours the unity of 
three. We do not, however, as they seem to suppose, think the Divine 
essence divisible, and participated by, and shared among, three persons ; 
but wholly and undividedly possessed and enjoyed. Whether, therefore, 
we address our prayers and adorations to the Father, Son, or Holy 
Ghost, we address the same adorable Being, the one living and true Ged. 
“ Jehovah, our Aleim, is one Jehovah.” With reference to the relations 
which each person bears to us in the redeeming economy, our ap- 
proaches to the Father are to be made through the mediation of the 
Son, and by, or with dependence upon, the assistance of the Holy Spi- 
-rit. Yet, as the authority of the New Testament shows, this does not 
preclude direct prayer to Christ and to the Holy Spirit, and direct 
ascriptions of glory and honour to each. In all this we glorify the one 
“ God over all, blessed for evermore.” 


476 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES Bs, {PART 


CHAPTER X. 
Trini ry—Pre-ewistence of Christ. 


By establishing, on Scriptural authority, the pre-existence of our Lora, 
we take the first step in the demonstration of his absolute Divinity. His 
pre-existence, indeed, simply considered, does not evince his Godkead 
and is not, therefore, a proof against the Arian hypothesis ; but it de 
stroys the Socinian notion, that he was a man only. For since no one 
contends for the pre-existence of human souls, and if they did, the doctrine 
would be refuted by their own consciousness, it is clear, that if Christ 
existed before his incarnation, he is not a mere man, whatever his nature, 
by other arguments, may be proved to be. 

This point has been felt to press so heavily upon the doctrine of the 
simple humanity of Christ, that both ancient and modern Socinians have 
bent against it all those arts of interpretation which, more than any thing 
else, show both the hopelessness of their cause, and the pertinacity 
with which they cling to oft and easily refuted error. I shall dwell a 
little on this point, because it will introduce some instances in illustra- 
tion of the peculiar character of the Socinian mode of perverting the 
Scriptures. 

The existence of our Lord prior to his incarnation might be forcibly 
argued from the declarations that he was “sent into the world ;” that 
“he came in the flesh ;” that “ he took part of flesh and blood ;” that he 
was “found in fashion as a man ;” and other similar phrases. These 
are modes of speech which are used of no other person; which are 
never adopted to express the natural birth, and the commencement of 
the existence of ordinary men ; and which Socinianism, therefore, leaves 
without a reason, and without an explanation, when used of Christ. 
But arguments drawn from these phrases are rendered wholly unneces- 
sary, by the frequent occurrence of passages which explicitly declare 
his pre-existence, and by which the ingenuity of unsubmissive criticism 
has been always foiled; the interpretations given being too forced, and 
too unsupported, either by the common rules of criticism, or by the 
idioms of language, to produce the least impression upon any, not pre. 
viously disposed to torture the word of God in order tu make it subse~vient 
to an error. 

The first of these proofs of the pre-exister.ce of Christ is froin the 
testimony of the Baptist, John 1, 15, «* He that cometh after me is pre. 
ferred before me, for he was before me ;” or as it is in verse 30, “ After 
me cometh a man which is preferred before me, for he was before me.” 

The Socinian exposition is, “The Christ, who is to begin his ministry 
alter me has, by the Divine appointment, been preferred before me, 
because he is my chief or principal.” Thus they interpret the last 


SECOND. } THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 477 


-lause “for he was before me,” in the sense of dignity, and not of 
time, though St. John uses the same word to denote priority of time, 
in several places of his Gospel, “If the world hate you, you know that 
it hated me, before it hated you ;” and ch. i, 41; viii, 7; xx, 4-8. If 
they take the phrase in the second clause eurpoodev wx yeyovev it. the 
sense of “ preferred,” then, by their mode of rendering the last clause, 
as Bishop Pearson has observed, “a thing is made the reason of itself, 
which is a great absurdity and a vain tautology.” He is preferred 
before me, because he is my chief;” whereas by taking wpwro¢ ws in 
the sense of time, a reason for this preference is given. There is, 
however, another rendering of the second clause which makes the pas- 
sage still more impracticable in the sense of the Socinians. Eyrpoodsv 
‘S never in the Septuagint or in the New Testament used for dignity or 
rank ; but refers either to place or time, and if taken in the sense of time, 
the rendering will be, “ He that cometh after me was before me ;” and 
ort, in the next clause, signifying “ certainly,” “ truly,” (“chleusner 
sub voce,) the last clause will be made emphatical, “ certainly, he was 
before me,” and is to be considered, not as giving a reason for the senti- 
ment in the preceding clause, or as tautological, but as explanatory and 
impressive ; a mode of speaking exceedingly natural when so great a 
doctrine, and so high a mystery was to be declared, that he who was 
born after John, was yet, in point of existence, before him ;—* certainly, 
he was before me.” ‘This rendering of the second clause is adopted by 
several eminent critics; but whether this or the common version be 
preferred, the verb in the last clause, he was before me, sufficiently 
fixes apwrog in the sense of priority of time. Had it referred to the 
rank and dignity of Christ, it would not have been, “he was,” but “he 
is before me,” ssi not nv. 

The passages which express that Christ came down from heaven, are 
next to be considered. He styles himself “the bread of God which 
cometh down from heaven.—The living bread which came down from 
heaven.—He that cometh from above is above all; he that is of the 
earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth ; he that cometh from heaven 
ts above all;” and in his discourse with Nicodemus, ‘* No man hath 
ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son 
of man which is in heaven.” In what manner are declarations so plain 
and ur equivocal to be eluded, and by what arts are they to be interpreted, 
into n thing? This shall be considered. Socinus and his early dis- 
ciples in order to account for these phrases, supposed that Christ, 
between the time of his birth and entrance upon his office, was translated 
into heaven, and there remained some time, that he might see and hear 
those things which he was to publish in the world. This hypothesis, 
however, only proves the difficulty, or rather the impossibility of intén. 
preting these passages so as to turn away their hostile aspect from the 


478 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. ~~ (PART 


errors of man. It is supported by no passage of Scrinture, by no tradi- 
tion, by no reason in the nature of the thing, or in the discourse. The 
modern Socinians, therefore, finding the position of their elder brethren 
untenable, resolve the whole into figure, the most convenient method of 
evading the difficulty, and tell us, that as we should naturally say, that a 
person who would become acquainted with the secret purposes of God, 
must ascend to heaven to converse with him, and return to make them 
known, so our Lord’s words do not necessarily imply a literal ascent 
and descent, but merely this, “ that he alone was admitted to an intimate 
knowledge of the Divine will, and was commissioned to reveal it to men.” 
(Belsham’s Calm Inquiry.) 

In the passages quoted above, as declarations of the pre-existence of 
Christ, it will be seen that there are two phrases to be accounted for, 
—ascending into heaven,—and, coming down from heaven. ‘The former 
is said to mean the being admitted to an intimate knowledge of the 
Divine counsels. But if this were the sense, it could not be true that 
‘no man” had thus ascended but “ the Son of man ;” since Moses and all 
the prophets in succession had been admitted to “an intimate knowledge 
of the Divine counsels,” and had been ‘“‘ commissioned” to reveal them. 
It is nothing to say that our Lord’s acquaintance with the Divine counsels 
was more deep and comprehensive. ‘The case is not stated compara- 
ttvely, but exclustvely,—“ No man hath ascended into heaven but the 
Son of man ;”? no man, but himself, had been in heaven. (7) Allowing 
therefore the principle of the Socinian gloss, it is totally inapplicable to 
the text in question, and is in fact directly refuted by it. 

But the principle is false, and it may be denied, that “to ascend into 
heaven” is a Hebrew phrase to express the knowledge of high and 
mysterious things. So utterly does this pretence fail, that not one of the 
passages they adduce in proof can be taken in any other than its literal 
meaning ; and they are therelore, as are others, directly against them 
Deut. xxx, 11, 1s first adduced. ‘ Who shall go up for us into heaven 
and bring it unto us?” ‘This we are told we must take figuratively ; but 
then, unhappily for them, it is also immediately subjoined, “neither is 
it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, who shall go over the sea for 
us?” If the ascent into heaven in the first clause is to be taken figura- 
tively, then the going beyond the sea cannot be taken literally, and we 
shall still want a figurative interpretation for this part of the declaration 
of Moses respecting the law, which will not so easily be furnished. The 
same observation is applicable to Romans x, 6, in which there is an 
adaptation of the passage in Deuteronomy to the Gospel. “ Who shal! 
ascend into heaven? that is, to bring Christ down from above,” &e, 
words which have no meaning unless place be literally understood, and 


‘7) “No wan, except myself, ever was in heaven.” (Pearce.) 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 479 


which show that the apostle, a sufficient judge of Hebrew modes of 
expression, understood, in its literal sense, the passage in Deuteronomy. 
A. second nassage to which they trust, is Prov. xxx, 4, “ Who hath 
ascended and descended,” but if what immediately follows be added, 
“‘who hath gathered the winds in his fists, who hath bound the waters 
in a garment,” &c, it will be seen that the passage has no reference 
to the acquisition of knowledge by a servant of God, but expresses the 
various operations in nature carried on by God himself. “Who hath 
done this? What is his name, and what is his son’s name, if thou canst 
tell ?”” 

Jn Baruch iii, 29, it is asked of wisdom, “ Who hath gone up- into 
heaven, and taken her, and brought her down from the clouds?” but it 
is here also added, “ Or who hath gone over the sea for her?’ Wisdom 
is, in this passage, clearly personified ; a place of habitation is assigned 
her, which is to be sought out by those who would attain her. ‘This 
apocryphal text, therefore, gives no countenance to the mystical notion 
of ascending into heaven, advanced by Socinian expositors. 

If they then utterly fail to establish their forced and unnatural sense 
of ascending into heaven; let us examine whether they are more suc- 
cessful in establishing their opinion as to the meaning of “ coming down 
from heaven.” ‘This, they say, means “to be commissioned to reveal 
the will of God to men;” (Lelsham’s Calm Inquiry ;) but if so, the 
phrases, “to ascend up into heaven,” and “to come down from thence,” 
which are manifestly opposed to each other, lose all their opposition in 
the interpretation, which is sufficient to show, that it is, as to both, 
entirely gratuitous, arbitrary and contradictory. For, as Dr. Magee 
has acutely remarked, “it is observed by the editors of the Unitarian 
Version, and enforced with much emphasis by Mr. Belsham and Dr. 
Carpenter, that to ‘ascend into heaven’ signifies ‘to become acquainted 
with the truths of God,’ and that consequently the ‘ correlative’ to this, 
(the opposite they should have said,) to ‘descend from heaven,’ must 
mean ‘to bring and to discover those truths to the world.’ (Imp. Vers. p. 
208; Calm Ing. p. 48.) Now allowing those gentlemen all they wish to 
establish as to the first clause,—that to go up into heaven means to learn 
and become acquainted with the counsels of God,—what must follow then 
if they reasoned justly upon their own principles? Plainly this, that 

to come down from heaven, being precisely the opposite of the former, 
must mean to wlearn, or to lose the knowledge of those counsels : so that, 
so far from bringing and discovering those counsels to mankind, our 
Lord must have disqualified himself from bringing any. Had indeed 
‘ ASCENDING into heaven’ meant ‘ BRINGING the truth (any where) FRoM 
men,’ then ‘prscenpinG from heaven’ might justly be said to mean 
‘BRINGING it back to men.’ Whatever, in short, asceNDING may be 
supposed to signify in any figure, pest ENDING must signify the opposte. 


iSO THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES ~~ [PART 


if the figure be abided by: and therefore, if to ascenpD be to learn, to 
DESCEND must be to unlearn.” (Discourses on the Atonement.) 

It is farther fatal to this opinion that “if to come from heaven ; to de- 
scend from heaven,” &c, signify receiving a Divine commission to teach ; 
or, more simply to communicate truth afte: it has been learned, it is never 
used with reference to Moses, or to any of the prophets, or Divinely 
appointed instruments who, from time to time, were raised up among the 
Jews. We may therefore conclude, that the meaning attached to these 
phrases by Socinian writers of the present day, who, in this respect, as 
in many others, have ventured to step beyond their predecessors who 
never denied their literal acceptation, was unknown among the Jews, 
and is a mere subterfuge to escape from the plain testimony of Holy 
Writ on a point so fatal to their scheme. 

The next passage which may be quoted as expressing, in unequivocal 
terms, the pre-exisetnce of Christ, occurs John vi, 62, and is, if possible, 
still more out of the reach of that kind of criticism which has just been 
exhibited. The occasion, too, fixes the sense beyond all perversion. 
Our Lord had told the Jews that he was the bread of life, which came 
down from heaven. 'This the Jews understood literally, and therefore 
asked, “ Is not this the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know, 
how is it then that he saith, I came down from heaven?” His disciples 
too so understood his words, for they also “ murmured.” But our Lord, 
so far from removing that impression, so far from giving them the most 
distant hint of a mode of meeting the difficulty like that resorted to by 
Socinian writers, strengthens the assertion, and makes his profession a 
stumbling block still more formidable, “ Doth this offend you ?” referring 
to what he had just said, that he had descended from heaven, ‘“‘ What 
and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up WHERE HE WAS BEFORE.” 
Language cannot be more explicit ; though Mr. Belsham has ventured to 
tell us that this means, ‘‘ What if I go farther out of your reach, and 
become more perplexing and mysterious!” And indeed perplexing and 
mysterious enough would be the words both of Christ and his apostles, 
if they required such criticisms for their elucidation. 

The phrase to be “ sent from God,” they think they sufficiently avert, 
by urging that it is said of the Baptist, “ There was a man sent from 
(rod, whose name was John.” This, they urge, clearly evinces, ‘that 
to come from God is to be commissioned by him. If Jesus was sent 
from God, so was John the Baptist; if the former came down .rom 
heaven, so did the latter.” This reasoning must be allowed to be falla. 
cious, if it can be shown that it contradicts other scriptures. Now our 
Lord says, John vi, 46, “ No one hath seen the Father, save he who is 
from God, he ovros, hath seen the Father ;” namely, this one person, for 
it is singular, and no one else hath seen the Father. Therefore, if 
Christ was that person, as will not be disputed, John could not be “sent 


ire 


SECOND.] THEOLUGICAL INSTITUTES. 48] 


‘rom God,” in the same manner that Christ was. What does the Bap. 
ust say of himself? Does he confirm the Socinian g!oss 7? Speaking 
of Christ and of himself he says, “‘ He that cometh from above is above 
all; he that is of the earth is earthly, he that cometh from neaven is 
above all,” John iii, 31. Here John contrasts his earthly origin with 
Christ’s heavenly origin. Christ is “from above ;” John from «the 
earth,” x sg yng. Christ is “above all,” which he could not be, if 
every other prophet came in like manner from heaven, and from above ; 
and therefore if John was “sent from God,” it cannot be in the same 
sense that Christ was sent from him, which is enough to silence the 
objection. . (Holden’s Scripture Testimonies.) Thus, says Dr. Nares, 
“we have nothing but the positive contradictions of the Unitarian party, 
fo prove to us that Christ did not come from heaven, though he says 
nf himself, he did come from heaven; that though he declares he had 
seen the Father, he had not seen the Father; that though he assures us 
that he, in a most peculiar and singular manner came forth from God, 
(sx sx Oss efqdev, a strong and singular expression,) he came from him 
no otherwise than like the prophets of old, and his own immediate fore- 
runner.” (Remarks on the Imp. Version.) 

Several other equally striking passages might claim our attention , 
out it will be sufficient for the argument, to close it with two. 

“ Before Abraham was, I am,” John viii, 58. Whether the verb sis 
“ T am,” may be understood to be equivalent to the incommunicable 
name Jehovah, shall be considered in another place. The obvious sense 
of the passage at least is, “ Before Abraham was, or was born, I was in 
existence.” Abraham, the patriarch, was the person spoken of; for 
the Jews having said, “Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou 
seen Abraham?” our Lord declares, with his peculiarly solemn mode 
of introduction, “ Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, | 
am.” I had priority of existence, “together with a continuation of it to 
the present time.” (Pearson on the Creed.) Nor did the Jews mistake 
his meaning, but being filled with indignation at so manifest a claim of 
Divinity, “they took up stones to stone him.” 

How then do the Socinians dispose of this passage? The two hypo- 
theses on which they have rested, for one would not suffice, are, first, 
“That Christ existed before the patriarch Abraham had become, 
according to the import of his name, the father of many nations, that 
is, befcre the Gentiles were called ;” which was as true of the Jews 
who were discoursing with him, as of himself. The second is, “ before 
Abraham was born I am he, i. e. the Christ, in the destination and 
appointment of God ;” which also was saying nothing peculiar of Christ ; 
since the existence and the part which every one of his hearers was to 
act, were as much in the destination and appointment of God as his own. 


Both these absurdities are well exposed by Bishop Pearson :— 
Vou. I. 31 


182 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES.  - [PART 


“ The first interpretation makes our Saviour thus to speak :—Do ye 
so much wouder how I should have seen Abraham, who am not yet fifty 
years old? Do ye imagine so great a contradiction in this? I tell you, 
and be ye most assured that what I speak unto you at this time is most 
certainly and infallibly true, and most worthy of your observation, 
which moves me not to deliver it without this solemn asseveration, 
(Verily, verily, I say unto you,) before Abraham shall perfectly become 
that which was signified in his name, the father of many nations, before 
the Gentiles shall come in, J am. Nor be ye troubled at this answer, 
or think in this I magnify myself; for what I speak is as true of you 
yourselves as it is of me: before Abram be thus made Abraham, ye are. 
Doubt ye not, therefore, as ye did, nor ever make that question again 
whether I have seen Abraham.” 

‘“‘ The second explication makes a sense of another nature, but with 
the same impertinency :—Do ye continue still to question, and with so 
much admiration do ye look upon my age and ask, Hast thou seen Abra- 
ham? I contess it is’*more than eighteen hundred years since that 
patriarch died, and less than forty since I was born at Bethlehem: but 
look not on this computation, for before Abraham was born I was. But 
mistake me not, I mean that I was in the foreknowledge and decree of 
God. Nor do I magnify myself in this, for ye also were so. How 
either of these answers should give any reasonable satisfaction to the 
question, or the least occasion of the Jews’ exasperation, is not to be 
understood. And that our Saviour should speak of any such imperti- 
nencies as these interpretations bring forth, is not by a Christian to be 
conceived. Wherefore, as the plain and most obvious sense is a proper 
and full answer to the question, and most likely to exasperate the unbe- 
heving Jews; as those strained explications render the words of Christ 
not only impertinent to the occasion, but vain and useless to the hearers 
of them ; as our Saviour gave this answer in words of another language, 
most probably incapable of any such interpretations; we must adhere 
unto that literal sense already delivered, by which it appeareth Christ 
had a being, as before John, so also before Abraham, and consequently 
by that he did exist two thousand years before he was born, or con- 
ceived by the virgin.” (Exposition of the Creed.) 

The observations of Whitaker on this decisive passage, are in his 
usual energetic manner :— 

“¢ Your Father Abraham,’ says our Saviour to the Jews, ‘ rejoiced to 
see my day ; and he saw it, and was glad.’ Our Saviour thus proposes 
himself to his countrymen, as their Messiah; that grand object of hope 
and desire to their fathers, and particularly to this first father of the 
faithful, Abraham. But his countrymen, not acknowledging his claim 
to the character of Messiah, and therefore not allowing his supernatural 
priority of existence to Abraham, chose to consider his words in a sig. 


\ 


SECOND. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 483 


nification merely human. ‘Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not 
‘afty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? But what does our 
Saviour reply to this low and and gross comment upon his intimation ? 
Does he retract it, by warping his language to their poor perverseness, 
and so waiving his pretensions to the assumed dignity? No! to have 
so acted, would have been derogatory to his dignity, and injurious to 
their interests. He actually repeats his claim to the character. He 
actually enforces his pretensions to a supernatural priority of existence. 
Ile even heightens both. He mounts up far beyond Abraham. He 
ascends beyond all the orders of creation. And he places himself with 
God at the head of the universe. He thus arrogates to himself all that 
high pitch of dignity, which the Jews expected their Messiah to assume. 
This he does too in the most energetic manner, that his simplicity of 
language, so natural to inherent greatness, would possibly admit. He 
also introduces what he says, with much solemnity in the form, and 
with more in the repetition. ‘ Verily, verily, I say unto you,’ he cries, 
‘BEFORE ABRAHAM was, I am.’ He says not of himself, as he says 
of Abraham, ‘ Before he was, I was.’ This indeed would have been 
sufficient, to affirm his existence previous to Abraham. But it would 
not have been sufficient, to declare what he now meant to assert, his full 
claim to the majesty of the Messiah. He therefore drops all forms of 
language, that could be accommodated to the mere creatures of God. 
He arrests one, that was appropriate to the Godhead itself. ‘ Before 
Abraham was,’ or still more properly, ‘ Before Abraham was mapE, he 
says, ‘I am.’ He thus gives himself the signature of uncreated and 
continual existence, in direct opposition to contingent and created. He 
says of himself, 
That an eternal now for ever lasts, 

with him. He attaches to himself that very stamp of eternity, which 
God appropriates to his Godhead in the Old Testament; and from 
which an apostle afterward describes ‘Jesus Christ’ expressly, to be 
‘the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.’ Nor did the Jews pre- 
tend to misunderstand him now. They could not. They heard him 
directly and decisively vindicating the noblest rights of their Messiah, 
and the highest honours of their God, to himself. ‘They considered him 
as a mere pretender to those. ‘They therefore looked upon him, as a 
blasphemous arrogator of these. ‘Then took they up stones, to cast at 
him’ as a blasphemer; as what indeed he was in his pretensions tu be 
God, if he had not been in reality their Messiah and their God in one. 
But he instantly proved himself to their very senses, to be both; by 
exerting the energetic powers of his Godhead, upon them. For he ‘ hid 
himself; and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them ; 
and so passed by.’ ” 

The last passage which I shall quote, may properly, both from its 


asd THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, - [PART 


dignity and explicitness, close the whole. John xvii, 5, “ And now, O 
Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had 
with thee before the world was.” Whatever this glory was, it was pos- 
sessed by Christ before the world was; or, as he afterward expresses 
it, ‘‘ before the foundation of the world.” That question is therefore not 
to be confounded with the main point which determines the pre-existence) 
of our Lord ; for if he was with the Father, and had a glory with him 
before the world was, and of which ‘‘he emptied himself” when -he 
became man, then he had an existence, not only before his incarnation, 
but before the very “ foundation of the world.” The Socinian glvss is, 
“the glory which I had with thee, in thy immutable decree, before the 
world was; or which thou didst decree, before the world was, to give 
me.” But 4 sryov wapa do, “ which I had with thee,” cannot bear any 
such sense. ‘The occasion was too peculiar to admit of any mystical, 
forced, or parabolic modes of speech. [It was in the. hearing of his 
disciples, just before he went out into the garden, that these words were 
spoken; and, as it has been well observed, it is remarkable, that he 
introduces the mention of this glory, when it was not necessary to com- 
plete the sense of any proposition. And yet, as if on purpose to prevent 
the apostles, who heard his prayer, from supposing that he was asking 
that which he had not possessed in any former period, he adds, “ with — 
the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” So decisive is 
this passage, that as Dr. Harwood says, “ Were there no intimation in 
the whole New Testament of the pre-existence of Christ, this single 
passage would irrefragably demonstrate and establish it. Our Saviour, 
here in a solemn act of devotion, declares to the Almighty, that he had 
glory with him before the world was, and fervently supplicates that he 
would be graciously pleased to re-instate him in his former felicity. 
The language is plain and clear. Every word has great moment and 
emphasis :—‘ Glorify thou me with that glory which I enjoyed in thy 
presence, before the world was.’ Upon this single text I lay my finger. 
Here I posit my system. And if plain words be designedly employed 
to convey any determinate meaning ; if the modes of human speech 
have any precision, I am convinced, that this plain declaration of our 
Lord, in an act of devotion, exhibits a great and important truth, which 
cat. never be subverted or invalidated by any accurate and satisfactory 
criticism.” (Socinian Scheme.) 

Whatever, therefore, the true nature of our Lord Jesus Christ may he, 
we have at least discovered from the plainest possible testimonies ; testi 
monies which no criticism, and no unlicensed and paraphrastic comments 
have been able to shake or to obscure, that he had an existence previous 
to his incarnation, and previous to the very “ founaation of the world.” 
If then we find that the same titles and works which are ascribed to 
him in the New Testament, are ascribed to a Divine person in the Old. 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 485 


who is yet represented as distinct from God the Father, and especially 
-0 one who was to come into the world to fulfil the very offices which 
our Lord has actually fulfilled, we shall have obtained another step in 
shis inquiry, and shall have exhibited lofty proof, not only of the pre. 
existence of Christ, but also of his Divinity. This will be the subject of 
the next chapter. 


CHAPTER XI. 
Trintty.—Jesus Christ the Jehovah of the Old Testament. 


In reading the Scriptures of the Old Testament, it is impossible not 
to mark with serious attention the frequent visible appearances of God 
to the patriarchs and prophets; and, what is still more singular, his 
visible residence in a cloud of glory, both among the Jews in the wilder- 
hess and in their sacred tabernacle and temple. 

The fact of such appearances cannot be disputed; they are allowed 
by all, and in order to point out the bearing of this fact upon the point 
at issue, the Divinity of Christ, it is necessary, 

1. To show that the person who made these appearances, was truly 
a Divine person. 

The proofs of this are, that he bears the names of Jehovah, God, and 
other Divine appellations ; and that he dwelt among the Israelites as 
the object of their supreme worship; the worship of a people, the first 
precept of whose law was, ‘ Thou shalt have no other Gods before 
me.” ‘The proofs are copious, but quotations shall not be needlessly 
‘multiplied. 

When the Angel of the Lord found Hagar in the wilderness, “ she 
called the name of JeHovaun that spake to her, Thou God seest me.”— 
JeHOVvAH appeared unto Abraham ir the plains of Mamre. Abraham 
lifted up his eyes, and three men, three persons in human form, “ stood 
by him.” One of the three is called Jehovah. And Jenovan said, 
“Shall I hide from Abraham the thing that Ido?” ‘Two of the three 
depart, but he to whom this high appellation is given remains, * but 
Abraham stood yet before Jenovan.” This Jehovah is called by Abra- 
ham in the conversation which followed, “the Judge of all the earth ;” 
and the account of the solemn interview is thus closed by the tstorian, 
*the Lord (Jehovah) went his way as soon as he had left off commun. 
mg with Abraham.” Appearances of the same personage occur to 
Isaac and*to Jacob, under the name of “the God of Abraham, and of 
Isaac.” After one of these manifestations, Jacob says, “I have seen 
God face to face ;” and at another, “Surely the Lord (Jenovan) is in 
chis place.” The same Jehovah was made visible to Moses, and gave 
nim his commission, and God said, “I am rHar I am; thou shalt say 


486 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, | [PART 


to the children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto you.” The same 
Jenovau went before the Israelites by day in a pillar of cloud, and by 
night in a pilar of fire ; and by him the law was given amidst terrible 
displays of power and majesty from Mount Sinai. “I am the Lord 
(Jewovan) thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, 
out of the house of bondage, thou shalt have no other Gods before ine, 
dc. Did ever people hear the voice of God, speaking out of the midst 
of the fire as thou hast heard and live?’ This same personage com- 
manded the Israelites to build him a sanctuary, that he might reside 
among them; and when it was erected he took possession of it in a 
visible form, which was called “the glory of the Lord.” There the 
SuecuHinaun, the visible token of the presence of Jehovah, rested above 
the ark; there he was consulted on all occasions, and there he received 
their worship from age to age. Sacrifices were offered; sin was con- 
fessed and pardoned by him; and the book of Psalms is a collection of 
the hymns which were sung to his honour in the tabernacle and temple 
services, where he is constantly celebrated as Jenovan the God of 
Israel ; the “ Jehovah, God of their fathers ;” and the object of their own 
exclusive hope and trust: all the works of creation are in those sub. 
lime compositions ascribed to him; and he is honoured and adored as 
the governor of all nations, and the sole ruler among the children of 
men. In a word, to mark his Divinity in the strongest possible manner, 
all blessings, temporal, spiritual, and eternal, “light and defence, grace 
and glory,” are sought at his hands. | 

Thus the same glorious being, bearing the appellation of Jenovaun, is 
seen as the object of the worship and trust of ages, and that under a 
visible manifestation ; displaying attributes, engaged in operations, and 
assuming dignities and honours, which unequivocally array him with the 
majesty of absolute Divinity. 

To this the objections which have been made, admit of a most satis- 
factory answer. 

The first is. that this personage is also called “the Angel of the 
Lord.” ‘This is true; but if that Angel of the Lord is the same person 
as he who is called Jehovah; the same as he who gave the law in his 
own name, then it is clear that the term “ Angel” does not indicate a 
created being, and is a designation not of nature, but of office, which 
will be just now accounted for, and is not at all inconsistent with his 
true and proper Divinity. 

The collation of a few passages, or of the different parts of the sume 
passages of Scripture, will show that Jehovah and “the Angel of the 
Lord,” when used in this eminent sense, are the same person. Jacob 
; says of Bethel, where he had exclaimed, “ Surely Jehovah is in this 
place :”” The Angel of God appeared to me in a dream, saying, I am the 
God of Bethel. Upon his death bed he gives the names of God and 


BEUOND.| THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES 487 


Angel to this same person. “The God which fed me all my life long 
unto this day, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the 
lads.’ So in Hosea, xii, 2, 5, it is said, “ By his strength he had power 
with God, yea he had power over the Angel and prevailed.” “We 
found him in Bethel, and there he spake with us, even the Lord God of 
hosts, the Lord is his memorial.” Here the same person has the 
names God, Angel, and Lord God of hosis. “The Angel of the Lord 
called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said, by myself have 
I sworn saith the Lord, (Jehovah,) that since thou hast done this thing, 
in blessing I will bless thee.” The Angel of the Lord appeared to 
Moses in a flame of fire; but this same Angel of the Lord « called to 
him out of the bush, and said, 1 am the God of thy fathers, the God of 
Abrahain, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and Moses hid his 
face, for he was afraid to look upon God.” ‘To omit many other pas- 
sages, St. Stephen, in alluding to this part of the history of Moses, in his 
speech before the council, says, ‘There appeared to Moses in the 
wilderness of Mount Sinai, An angel of the Lord in a flame of fire,” 
showing that that phraseology was in use among the Jews in his day, 
and that this Angel and Jehovah were regarded as the same being, for 
he adds, “ Moses was in the Church in the wilderness with the Angel 
which spoke unto him in Mount Sinai.” There is one part of the his- 
tory of the Jews in the wilderness, which so fully shows that they dis- 
tinguished this Angel of Jehovah from all created angels, as to deserve 
particular attention. In Exodus xxiii, 20, God makes this promise to 
Moses and the Israelites, “ Behold I send an Angel before thee to keep 
thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared; 
beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not 
pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him.” Of this Angel 
let it be observed, that he is here represented as the guide and protector 
of the Israelites ; to him they were to owe their conquests and their 
settlement in the promised land, which are in other places often attribu- 
ted to the immediate agency of God—that they are cautioned to “ beware 
of him,” to reverence and stand in dread of him—that the pardoning of 
transgressions belongs to him—finally, “that the name of God was in 
him.” This name must be understood of God’s own peculiar name, 
Jenovan, I am, which he assumed as his distinctive appellation at his 
first appearing to Moses ; and as the names of God are indicative of his 
natace, he who had a right to bear the peculiar name of God, must also 
have his essence. This view is put beyond all doubt by the fact, that 
Moses and the Jews so understood the promise ; for afterward when 
their sins had provoked God to threaten not to go up with them himself, 
but to commit them to “an Angel who should drive out the Canaanite, 
&c,” the people mourned over this as a great calamity, and Moses be- 
took himself to special intercession, and rested not until he obtained the 


488 THEOLOGICAL UNSTITUTES. {PART 


repeal of the threat, and the renewed promise, “my presence shall go 
with thee and I will give thee rest.” Nothing, therefore, can be more 
clear than that Moses and the Israelites considered the promise of the 
Angel, in whom was “the name of God,” as a promise that God him- 
self would go with them. With this uncreated Angel, this presence of 
the Lord, they were satisfied, but not with “ an angel” indefinitely, with 
an angel, not so by office only, as was the appearing Angel of the Old 
Testament, but who was by nature of that order of beings usually so 
called, and therefore a created being. At the news of God’s determi- 
nation not to go up with them, Moses hastens to the tabernacle to make 
his intercessions, and refusess an inferior conductor. “If thy presence 
go not with me, carry us not up hence.” (8) 

That the Angel of Jehovah is constantly represented as Jehovah him- 
self; and therefore as a Divine person, is so manifest, that the means re- 
sorted to, to evade the force of the argument which so immediately flashes 
from it, acknowledge the fact. Those who deny the Divinity of our 
Lord, however, endeavour to elude the consequence according to their 
respective creeds. ‘I'he Arians, who think the appearing angel to have 
been Christ, but who yet deny him to be Jehovah himself, assume that 
this glorious but created being personated the Deity, and as his ambas- 
sador and representative spoke by his authority, and took his name. 
Thus a modern Arian observes, “The Angel takes the name of Jehovah 
because it is a common maxim, loquitur legatus sermone mittentis eum, 
as an ambassador in the name of his king, or the fecialis when he de- 
nounced war in the name of the Roman people; and what is done by 
the Angel is said to be done by God, according to another maxim, qui 
facit per alium, facit per se.” (Taylor, Ben Mordecai.) The answer to 
this is, that though ambassadors speak in the name of their masters, 
they do not apply the names and titles of their masters to themselves, 


(8) From this remarkable passage it appears to me very clear, that the Mes. 
senger or Angel of God, whom he here promises to be the leader of his people, 
is not a creature, much less Moses or Joshua, but an uncreated Angel. For 
(1) the clause, He will not pardon your sis, is not applicable to any created be- 
ing, whether Angel or man: (2) The sext words, My name is in him, cannot be 
explained to signify, he shall act in my name, that is, under my cornmand or by 
authority received from me, for in that case another word, he will act or he will 
speak, or the like would have been added: (3) The same conclusion is establish. 
ed by a comparison of this passage with chapter xxxii, 34, (and xxxii, 2,) where 
God expresses his indignation against the Israelites for their idolatry, by declaring 
that not himself, but an angel, should be henceforth their guide: Sut this, the 
people and Moses most earnestly deprecate [as a calamity and a judgment, 
whereas the present instance is a promise of favour and mercy, and is so acknow. 
ledged in Isaiah Ixii, 8.]  ‘‘ That angel, therefore, is perfectly different from him 
who is spoken of in this passage before us, who is the same that appeared to 
Moses, chapter iii, 2, and there likewise both speaks and act» as God himself.” 
(Dathii Pentateuchus.’ 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 489 


\ 1)—that the unquestionably created angels, mentioned in Scripture as ap- 
; earing to men, declare that they were sent by God, and never personate 
.-im,—that the prophets uniformly declare their commission to be from 
(rod,—that God himself declares, “Jehovah is my name, and my glory 
will I not give to another,”—and yet that the appearing Angel calls him- 
self, as we have sven, by this incommunicable name in almost innume- 
rable instances, and that though the object of the Mosaic dispensation 
was to preserve men from idolatry, yet this Angel claims and receives 
the exclusive worship both of the patriarchs to whom he occasionally 
appeared, and the Jews among whom he visibly resided for ages. It 1s 
therefore a pronosition too monstrous to be for a moment sustained, that 
a created being of any kind should thus allure men into idolatry, by act- 
ing the Deity, assuming his name, and attributing to himself God’s pe- 
culiar and incommunicable perfections and honour. (1) The Arian 
hypothesis on this subject is well answered by even a Socinian writer. 
«The whole transaction on Mount Sinai shows that Jehovah was pre- 
sent, and acted, and not another for him. It is the God that had de- 
livered them out of Egypt, with whom they were to enter into covenant 
as their God, and who thereupon accepted them as his people, who was 
the author of their religion and laws, and who himself delivered to them 
those ten commands, the most sacred part. ‘There is nothing to lead 
us to imagine that the person, who was their God, did not speak in his 
own name ; not the least intimation that here was another representing 
him.” (Lindsey’s Apology.) 

The author of “the Essay on Spirit” attempts to meet this by alleg- 
ing that “the Hebrews were far from being explicit and accurate in their 
style, and that it was customary for prophets and angels to speak in the 
name and character of God.” The reply of Dr. Randolph is able and 
decisive, and as this is a point of great importance, its introduction will 
not appear unnecessary. 

“ Some, to evade these strong proofs of our Lord’s Divinity, have as- 
serted that this was only a created angel appearing in the name or person 
of the Father; it being customary in Scripture for one person to sustain 
the character, and act and speak in the name of another. But these 
assertions want proof. I find no instances of one person acting and 
speaking in the name of another, without first declaring in whose name 


(9) ‘An earthly ambassador indeed represents the person of his prince, is sup- 
posed to be clothed with his authority, and speaks and acts in his name. But 
who ever heard of an ambassador assuming the very name of his sovereign, or 
being honoured with it by others? Would one in this character be permitted to 
say, I George, I Louis, I Frederic? As the idea is ridiculous, the action would 
justly be accounted high treason.” (Jamieson’s Vindication.) 2 

(1) — histrioniam exercuisse, in qua Dei nomen assumat, et omnia que 
Dei sunt, sibi attribuat. (Bishop Bull > 





490 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, — [PART 


he acts aia speaks. ‘The instances usually alleged are nothing to the 
purpose. If we sometimes find an angel in the book of Revelation 
speaking in the name of God, yet from the context it will be easy to 
show that this angel was the great Angel, the Angel of the Covenant. 
But if there should be some instances, in the poetical or prophetical parts 
of Scripture, of an abrupt change of persons, where the person speaking 
is not particularly specified, this will by no means come up to the cae 
before us. Here is a person sustaining the name and character of the 
most high God, (rom one end of the Bible to the other; bearing his glo. 
rious and fearful name, the incommunicable name Jehovah, expressive 
of his necessary existence ; sitting in the throne of God; dwelling and 
presiding in his temple ; delivering laws in his name; giving out oracles ; 
hearing prayers ; forgiving sins. And yet these writers would persuade 
us that this was only a tutelary angel; that a creature was the God of 
Israel, and that to this creature all their service and worship was directed; 
that the great God, ‘ whose nanie is Jealous,’ was pleased to give his 
glory, his worship, his throne to a creature. What is this but to make 
the law of God himself introductory of the same idolatry that was prac- 
tised by all the nations of the heathen? But we are told that bold figures 
of speech are common in the Hebrew language, which is not to be tied 
down in its interpretation to the severer rules of modern criticism. We 
may be assured that these opinions are indefensible, which cannot be 
supported without charging the word of God with want of propriety or 
perspicuity. Such pretences might be borne with, if the question were 
about a phrase or two in the poetical or prophetical parts of Scripture. 
But this, if it be a figure, is a figure which runs through the whole 
Scripture. And a bold interpreter must he be, who supposes that such 
figures are perpetually and uniformly made use of in a point of such 
importance, without any meaning at all. ‘This is to confound the use 
of language, to make the Holy Scripture a mysterious unintelligible book, 
sufficient to prove nothing, or rather to prove any thing, which a wild 
imagination shall suggest.” (Randolph's Vindication of the Doctrine of 
the Trinity.) 

If the Arian account of the Angel of Jehovah be untenable, the So- 
cinian notion will be found equally unsupported, and mdeed ridiculous. 
Dr. Priestley assumes the marvellous doctrine of “ occasional person. 
ality,” and thinks that “in some cases angels were nothing more than 
temporary appearances, and no permanent beings; the mere organs of 
the Deity, assumed for the purpose of making himself known.” He 
speaks therefore of “a power occasionally emitted, and then taken back 
again into its source ;” of this power being vested with a temporary per. 
sonality, and thinks this possible! Little cause had the doctor and his 
acherents to talk of the mystery and absurdity of the doctrine of three 
versons in one Godhead, who can make a person out of a power, emitted 


BECONND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. : 491 


and then drawn back again to its source ; a temporary person, without 
ndividual subsistence! The wildness of this fiction is its own refutation ; 
Sut that the Angel of Jehovah was not this temporary occasional person, 
produced or “emitted” for the occasion of these appearances, is made 
certain by Abraham’s “ walking before this Angel of the Lord,” that is, 
ordering his life and conversation in his sight all the days of his life; by 
Jacob calling him the Angel of the Lord who had « fed him all his life 
long ;” and by this also, that the same person who was called by him. 
self and by the Jews “the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob,” 
was the God of the chosen people in ail their generations. Mr, Lindsey 
says “that the outward token of the presence of God is what is generally 
meant by the Angel of God, when not particularly specified and appro 
priated otherwise ; that which manifested his appearance, whatever it 
was ;” and this opinion commonly obtains among the Socinians. “The 
Angel of the Lord was the visible symbol of the Divine presence.” 
(Belsham.) 'This notion, however, involves a whole train of absurdities. 
The term, the “ Angel of Jehovah” is not at all accounted for by a 
visible symbol of clouds, light, fire, &c, unless that symbol be considered 
as distinct from Jehovah. We have then the name Jehovah given to 
a cloud, a light, a fire, &c; the fire is the Angel of the Lord, and yet 
the Angel of the Lord calls to Moses out of the fire. This visible symbol 
says to Abraham, “ By mysre.r I have sworn,” for these are said to be 
the words of the Angel of Jehovah; and this Angel, the visible symbol, 
spake to Moses on Mount Sinai: such are the absurdities which flow 
from error! Most clearly therefore is it determined on the testimony of 
several scriptures, and by necessary induction from the circumstances 
uttending the numerous appearances of the Angel of Jehovah in the Old 
. Testament, that the person thus manifesting himself, and thus receiving 
supreme worship, was not a created angel as the Arians ‘vould have it, 
nor a meteor, an atmospheric appearance, the worthy theory of modern 
Socinians, but that he was a Divine PERsoN. 

_ 2. It will be necessary to show that this Divine person was not God 
the Father. 

The following argument has been adopted in proof of this: ‘* No man 
hath seen God at any time. Ye have neither heard his voice at any 
time nor seen his shape. Not that any man hath seen the Father. It 
is however said in the Old Testament, that God frequently appeared 
under the patriarchal] and Levitical dispensations, and therefore we must 
conclude that the God who appeared was God the Son.” 

Plausible as this argument is, it cannot he depended upon ; for that 
the Father never manifested himself to meu, as distinct from the Son, is 
contradicted by two express testimonies. We have seen that the Angel, 
in whom was the name of God, promised as the conductor of the Israel- 
ites through the wiluerness, was a Divine person. But he who promised 


492 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. . |PART 


to ‘send him,’’ must be a different person to the angel sent, and that 


person could be no other than the Father. “Behold, I send an angel 
before thee,” &c. On this occasion, therefore, Moses heard the voice 
of the Father. Again, at the baptism of Jesus the voice of the Father 
was heard, declaring, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am wel} 
pleased.” ‘The above passages must be therefore interpreted ti accora 
with these facts. They express the pure spirituality and invisibility of 
God, and can no more be argued against a sensible manifestation of 
God by audible sounds, and appearances, than the declaration to Moses, 
“No man can see my face and live.” There was an important sense 
in which Moses neither did nor could see God; and yet it is equally 
true, that he both saw him and heard him. He saw the “ backward 
parts,” but not the “ face of God.” (2) 

The manifestation of the Father was however very rare; as appears 
from by far the greater part of these Divine appearances being expressly 
called appearances of the Angel of the Lord. The Jehovah who ap. 
peared to Abram in the case of Sodom was an anger. The Jehovah 
who appeared to Hagar, is said also to be “the Angel of the Lord.” It 
was “the Angel of Jehovah from heaven” who sware by himself to 
Abraham, “In blessing I will bless thee.” Jacob calls the “God of 
Bethel,” that is, the God who appeared to him there, and to whom he 
vowed his vows, “the Angel of God.” In blessing Joseph, he calls the 
God “in whose presence my faihers, Abraham and Isaac have walked,” 
the Angel who had redeemed him from all evil. “I am ruar f{ am,” 
when he spoke to Moses out of the bush, is termed the Angel of Jehovah. 
The God who spake these words and said, “Thou shalt have no other 
gods before me,” is called the Angel who spake to Moses in the Mount 
Sinai. ‘The Being who dwelt in a fiery cloud, the visible token of the 
presence of God, and took up his residence over the ark, in the holiest 
place, and there received the constant worship of the Jews, is calle¢ 
the Angel of the Lord; and so in many other instances. 

Nor is there any reason for stretching the point to exclude in all case « 
the visible or audible agency of the Father, from the Old Testament ; 
no advantage in the least is gained by it, and it cannot be mai aained 
without sanctioning by exatple the conduct of the opposers of auth, in 
giving forced and unnatural expositions to several passages of Scripture, 
This ought to be avoided, and a consistency of fair honest interpretation 
be maintained throughout. It is amply sufficient for the important argu. 
ment with which we are nov concerned, to prove, not that the Father 
was never manifested in his own person; but that the Angel of the 
Lord, whose appearances are so often recorded, is not the Father. This 
‘s clear from his appellation angel, with respect to which there can be 


(2 Imperscrutabilem [Di esseatiam st majestetem. (Vatable.) 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITU'TES. 493 


but two interpretations. It is either a name descriptive uf nature or of 
office. In the first view it is generally employed in the sacred Scrip. 
tures to designate one of an order of intelligences superior to man, and 
vften employed in the service of man as the ministers of God, but still 
bei1.gs finite and created. We have however already proved that the 
Angel of the Lord is not a creature, and he is not therefore called an 
angel with reference to his nature. ‘The term must then be considered 
as a term of office. He is called the Angel of the Lord, because he was 
the messenger of the Lord; because he was sent to execute his will, and 
to be his visible image and representative. His office therefore under 
this appellation was ministerial; but ministration is never attributed to 
the Father. He who was sent must be a distinct person from him by 
whom he was sent; the messenger from him whose message he brought, 
and whose will he performed. The Angel of Jehovah is therefore a 
different person from the Jehovah whose messenger he was, and yet the 
Angel himself is Jehovah, and, as we have proved, truly Divine. Thus 
does the Old Testament most clearly reveal to us, in the case of Jehovah 
and the Angel of Jehovah, two Divine persons, while it still maintains its 
great fundamental principle, that there is but one God. 

3. The third step in this argument is, that the Divine person, called 
so often the Angel of Jehovah in the,Old Testament, was the promised 
and future Christ, and consequently Jesus, the Lord and Saviour of the 
Christian Church. 

We have seen, that it was the Angel of Jehovah who gave the law to 
the Israelites, and that in his own name, though still an angel, a messenger 
in the transaction ; being at once servant and Lord, angel and Jehovah, 
circumstances which can only be explained on the hypothesis of his 
Divinity, and for which neither Arianism nor Socinianism can give any 
solution. He therefore was the person who made the covenant, usually 
‘called the Mosaic, with the children of Israel. The Prophet Jeremiah 
however expressly says, that the new covenant with Israel was to be 
made by the same person who had made the old. ‘Behold, the days 
come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house 
of Israe] and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant 
that J made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand 
to bring them out of the land of Egypt.” The Angel of Jehovah, who 
led the Israelites out of Egypt and gave them their law, is here plainly 
introduced as the author of the new covenant. If then, as we learn from 
the Apostle Paul, this new covenant predicted by Jeremiah is the Chris- 
tian dispensation, and Christ be its author; the Christ of the New 
Testament, and the Angel of Jehovah of the Old, are the same 
person. | 

Equally striking is the celebrated prediction in Malachi, the last-of 
the prophets. «Behold I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare 


194 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, — [PAeTt 


my way before me; and the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come 
to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant whom ye delight in; 
behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts.” 

The characters under which the person who is the subject of this 
prophecy is described, are, the Lord, a sovereign Ruler, (3) the owner 
of the temple, and therefore a Divine prince or governor, he “ shall 
come to his temple.” ‘The temple,” savs Bishop Horsley, “in the 
writings of a Jewish prophet, cannot be otherwise understood, according 
to the literal meaning, than of the temple at Jerusalem. Of this temple, 
therefore, the person to come is here expressly called the Lord. The 
lord of any temple, in the language of all writers, and in the natural 
meaning of the phrase, is the divinity to whose worship it is consecrated. 
To no other divinity the temple of Jerusalem was consecrated than the 
true and everlasting Gdd, the Lord Jehovah, the Maker of heaven and 
earth. Here, then, we have the express testimony of Malachi, that the 
Christ, the Deliverer, whose coming he announces, was no other than 
the Jehovah of the Old Testament. Jehovah had delivered the Israelites 
from the Egyptian bondage; and the same Jehovah was to come in 
person to his temple, to effect the greater and more general deliverance 
of which the former was but an imperfect type.” 

He bears also the same title, angel or messenger, as he whose ap. 
pearances in the Old Testament have been enumerated. 

“ The Messenger of the Covenant, therefore, is Jehovah’s messenger ; 
—if his messenger, his servant; for a message is a service: it implies 
a person sending, and a person sent. In the person who sendeth there 
must be authority to send,—submission to that authority in the person 
sent. ‘The Messenger, therefore, of the Covenant, is the servant of the 
Lord Jehovah: but the same person who is the Messenger, is the Lord 
Jehovah himself, not the same person with the sender, but bearing the 
same name; because united in that mysterious nature and undivided 
substance which the name imports. ‘The same person, therefore, is 
servant and Lord; and, by uniting these characters in the same person, 
what does the prophet but describe that great mystery of the Gospel, the 
union of the nature which governs, and the nature which serves,—the 
union of the Divine and human nature in the person of the Christ 7” 
(Horsley’s Sermons.) 

Now this prophecy is expressly applied to Christ by St. Mark.== 
“The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it is 
written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall pre- 
pare thy way before thee.” It follows from this, that Jesus is the Lord, 
the Lord of the temple, the Messenger of the Covenant mentioned in 


(3) The same word is often applied to magistrates, and even fathers; but J 
H Michaélis says, that when it occurs as in this place with the prefix, it is ap 
propriated only to God. 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, 495 


the prophecy; and bearing these exact characters of the appearing 
Angel Jehovah of the Old Testament, wno was the King of the Jews; 
whose temple was His, because he resided in it, and so was called “ the 
house of the Lord ;” and who was “the Messenger” of their Covenant ; 
the identity of the persons cannot be mistaken. One coincidence is 
singularly s‘riking. It has been proved that the Angel Jehovah had his 
residence in the Jewish tabernacle and temple, and that he took posses: 
sion, or came suddenly to both, at their dedication, and filled them with 
his glory. On one occasion Jesus himself, though in his state of humili- 
ation, comes in public procession to the temple at Jerusalem, and calls 
it “his own,” thus at once declaring that he was the ancient and rightful 
Lord of the temple, and appropriating to himself this eminent prophecy. 
Bishop Horsley has introduced this circumstance in his usual striking 
and convincing manner :— 

“ A third time Jesus came still more remarkably as the Lord to his 
temple, when he came up from Galilee to celebrate the last passover, 
and made that public entry at Jerusalem which is described by all the 
evangelists. It will be necessary to enlarge upon the particulars of this 
mteresting story: for the right understanding of our Saviour’s conduct 
upon this occasion depends so much upon seeing certain leading circum- 
stances in a proper light,—upon a recollection of ancient prophecies, 
and an attention to the customs of the Jewish people,—that I am apt to 
suspect, few now-a-days discern in this extraordinary transaction what 
was clearly seen in it at the time by our Lord’s disciples, and in some 
measure understood by his enemies. I shall present you with an orderly 
detail of the story, and comment unon the particulars as they arise; and 
I doubt not but that by God’s assistance I shall teach you to perceive in 
this public entry of Jesus of Nazareth, (if you have not perceived it 
before,) a conspicuous advent of the great Jehovah to his temple.— 
Jesus, on his last journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, stops at the foot 
of Mount Olivet, and sends two of his disciples to a neighbouring village 
to provide an ass’s colt to convey him from that place to the city, dis. 
tant not more than half a mile. The colt is brought, and Jesus is seated 
upon it. This first circumstance must be well considered ; it is the Fey 
to the whole mystery of the story. What could be his meaning in 
choosing this singular conveyance? it could not be that the fatigue of 
the short journey which remained was likely to be too much for hin 
afoot; and that no better animal was to be procured. Nor was the 
ass in these days (though it had been in earlier ages an animal in high 
esteem in the east) used for travelling or for state by persons of the first 
condition,—that this conveyance should be chosen for the grandeur ot 
propriety of the appearance. Strange as it may seem, the coming to 
Jerusalem upon an ass’s colt was one of the prophetical characters ot 
the Messiah ; and the great singularity of it had perhaps been the reasan 


496 FHEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. JPART 


that this character had been more gererally attended to than any other : 
so that there was no Jew who was not apprized that the Messiah was to 
come to the holy city in that manner. ‘ Rejoice greatly, O daughter 
of Zion! shout, O daughter of Jerusalem!’ saith Zechariah ; ‘ Behold, 
thy Kinz cometh unto thee! He is just, and having salvation; lowly, 
and riding upon an ass, even a colt, the foal of an ass!’ And this pro 
phecy the Jews never understood of any other person than the Messian. 
Jesus, therefore, by seating himself upon the ass’s colt in order to go te 
Jerusalem, without any possible inducement either of grandeur or cons 
venience, openly declared himself to be that King who was to come, and 
at whose coming in that manner Zion was to rejoice. And so the dis- 
ciples, if we may judge from what immediately followed, understood 
this proceeding ; for no sooner did they see their master seated on the 
colt, than they broke out into transports of the highest joy, as if in this 
great sight they had the full contentment of their utmost wishes; con- 
ceiving, as it should seem, the sanguine hope that the kingdom was this 
instant to be restored to Israel. They strewed the way which Jesus 
was to pass with the green branches of the trees which grew beside it ; 
a mark of honour in the east, never paid but to the greatest emperors 
on occasions of the highest pomp. They proclaimed him the long- 
expected heir of David’s throne,—the Blessed One coming in the name 
‘of the Lord ; that is, in the language of Malachi, the Messenger of the 
Covenant: and they rent the skies with the exulting exclamation of 
‘Hosanna in the highest!’ On their way to Jerusalem, they are met 
by a great multitude from the city, whom the tidings had no sooner 
reached than they ran out in eager Joy to join his triumph. When they 
reached Jerusalem, ‘the whole city,’ says the blessed evangelist, ‘ was 
moved.’ Here recollect, that it was now the season of the passover. 
The passover was the highest festival of the Jewish nation, the anni- 
versary of that memorable night when Jehovah led his armies out of 
Egypt with a high hand and an extended arm,—‘ a night much to be 
remembered to the Lord of the children of Israel in their generations ;’ 
and much indeed it was remembered. The devout Jews flocked at this 
season to Jerusalem, not only from every corner of Judea, but from the 
remotest countries whither God had scattered them; and the numbers 
of the strangers that were annually collected in Jerusalem during this 
festival are beyond imagination. These strangers, who living at a dis 
tance knew little of what had been passing in Judea since their last visit, 
were they who were moved (as well they might be) with wonder und 
astonishment, when Jesus, so humble in his equipage, so honoured in his 
numerous attendants, appeared within the city gates; and every one 
asks his neighbour, ‘Who is this?’ Jt was replied by some of the 
natives of Judea,—but as I conceive, by none of the disciples; for any 
of them at this time would have given another answer,—it was replied, 


SECOND. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 497 


This is the Nazarene, the great prophet from Galilee.’ Through the 
throng of these astonished spectators the procession passed by the 
public streets of Jerusalem to the temple, where immediately the sacred 
porticoes resound with the continued hosannas of the multitudes. The 
chief priests and scribes are astuutshed and alarmed : they request Jesus 
Limself to silence his followers. Jesus, in the early part of his ministry, 
had always been cautious of any public display of personal consequence ; . 
lest the malice of his enemies should be too soon provoked, or the un. 
advised zeal of his friends should raise civil commotions. But now 
that his work on earth was finished in all but the last painful part of it, 
—now that he had firmly laid the foundations of God’s kingdom in the 
hearts of his disciples,—now that the apostles were prepared and 
instructed for their office,—now that the days of vengeance on the 
Jewish nation were at hand, and it mattered not how soon they should 
incur the displeasure of the Romans their masters,—Jesus lays aside a 
reserve which could be no longer useful; and, instead of checking the 
zeal of his followers, he gives a new alarm to the chief priests and 
scribes, by a direct and firm assertion of his right to the honours that 
were so largely shown to him. ‘If these,’ says he, ‘were silent, the 
stones of this building would be endued with a voice to proclaim my 
titles :’ and then, as on a former occasion, he drove out the traders ; but 
with a higher tone of authority, calling it his own house, and saying, 
‘My house is the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.’ 
You have now the story, in all its circumstances, faithfully collected 
from the four evanyelists; nothing exaggerated, but set m order, and 
perhups somewhat illustrated by an application of old prophecies, and a 
recollection of Jewish customs. Judge for yourselves whether this was 
not an advent of the Lord Jehovah taking personal possession of his 

temple.” (Horsley.) 

But it is not only in these passages that the name Jehovah, the appel- 
lation of the appearing Angel of the Old Testament, and other titles of 
Divinity, are given to Messiah ; and if Jesus be Messiah, then are they 
his titles and as truly mark hzs Divinity. 

« The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way 
of the Lord, (Jinovan,) make straight in the desert a high way for our 
God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain shall be 
made low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough 
places plain, and the glory of the Lord (Jenovan) shall be revealed, 
and all flesh shall see it together.” This being spoken of him of 
whom John the Baptist was to be the forerunner ; and the application 
having been afterward expressly made by the Baptist to our Lord, it is — 
evident that HE is the person “to whom the prophet attributes the 
communicable name of Jenovan, and styles him ‘our God.’ ”"—~ 


( Wogan.) 
WiObsrl. 32 


48 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, © [PART 


« Now all this was done that 1* might be fulfilled which was spoken 
of che orp by the prophet, saying. Behold a virgin shall conceive, and 
shall bring forth a Son, and they snall call his name Emanvet, whieh 
being interpreted is God with us.” Here another prediction of Isaiah 
is expressly applied to Jesus, “ ‘Thou shalt bring forth a son, and shalt 
call his name Jesus, and he shall be great, and the Lord God shall give 
_to him the throne of his father David, and he shal] reign over the house 
of Jacob for ever and ever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end.” 
These are the words of the angel to Mary, and obviously apply to our 
Lord the words of Isaiah, “ Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is 
given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name 
shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting 
Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and 
power there shall be no end, upon the throne of David to order and 
establish it for ever.” It is unnecessary at present to quote more of 
those numerous passages which speak of the future Messiah under 
Divine titles, and which are applied to Jesus as that Messiah actually 
manifested. They do not in so many words connect the Angel of 
Jehovah with Jesus as the same person; but, taken with the passages 
above adduced, they present evidence of a very weighty character in 
favour of that position. A plurality of persons in the one Godhead is 
mentioned in the Jewish Scriptures; this plurality is restricted to 
three ; one of them appears as the “ acting God” of the patriarchal and 
Mosaic age; the prophets speak of a Divine person to come as the 
Messiah, bearing precisely the same titles ; no one supposes this to be 
the Holy Ghost ; it cannot be the Father, seeing that Messiah is God’s 
servant and God’s messenger; and the only conclusion is, that the 
Messiah predicted is he who is known under the titles, Angel, Son of 
God, Word of God, in the Old Testament; and if Jesus be that Mes- 
siah, he is that Son, that Word, that Servant, that Messenger ; and bear- 
ing the same Divine characters as the Angel of Jehovah, is that Angel 
himself, and is entitled in the Christian Church to all the homage and 
worship which was paid to him in the Jewish. 

There are, however, a few passages which in a still more distinct 
manner than any which have been introduced, except that from the 
prophecy of Jeremiah, identify Jesus Christ with the Angel of Jehovah 
in the patriarchal and Levitical dispensations ; and a brief consideraticn 
of them will leave this important point completely established. 

Let it then be recollected, that he who dwelt in the Jewish taberna 
cle, between the cherubim, was the Angel Jehovah. In Psalm Ixviii, 
which was written on ‘he removal of the ark to Mount Zion, he 1s 
expressiy addressed. “This is the hill which God desireth to dwell 
in ;” and again, “ They have seen thy goings, O God, iny King, in thy 
sanctuary.” But the Apostle Paul, Eph. iv, 8, apphes this psalm ta 


SECOND.” THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES 449 


Christ, and considers this very ascent of the Angel Jehovah to Mount 
Zion as a prophetic type of the ascent of Jesus to the celestial Zion.— 
“ Wherefore he saith, when he ascended on high, he led captivity 
captive,’ &c. The conclusion, therefore, is, that the Angel Jehovah 
who is addressed in the psalm, and Christ, are the same person. This 
is marked with equal strength in verse 29. The psalm, let it be. 
observed, is determined by apostolical authority to be a prophecy of 
Christ, as indeed its terms intimate ; and with reference to the future 
conquests of Messiah, the prophet exclaims, “ Because of thy temple at 
Jerusalem shall kings bring presents unto thee.” The future Christ is 
spoken of as one having then a temple at Jerusalem. 

It was the glory of the Angel Jehovah, the resident God of the 
emple, which Jsaiah saw in the vision recorded in the sixth chapter 
of his prophecy before adduced; but the Evangelist John expressly 
declares that on that occasion the prophet saw the glory of Christ and 
spake of him. Christ therefore was the Lord of hosts whose glory 
filled the temple. 

St. Peter calls the Spirit of Jehovah, by which the prophets “ prophe- 
sied of the grace that should come, the Spirit of Christ.” He also 
informs us that “ Christ was put to death in the flesh, but quickened by 
the Spirit, by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in 
prison, which sometime were disobedient when once the long suffering 
of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing.” — 
Now whatever may be the full meaning of this difficult passage, Christ 
is clearly represented as preaching by his Spirit in the days of Noah, 
that is, inspiring Noah to preach. Let this be collated with the decla- 
ration of Jehovah before the flood, “ My Spirit shall not always strive 
with man, for that he is flesh, yet his days shall be a hundred and 
twenty years,” during which period of delay and long suffering, Noah 
was made by him, from whom alone inspiration can come, a preacher 
of righteousness ; ‘and it is clear that Christ, and the appearing Jehovah 
of the antediluvian world, are supposed by St. Peter to have been the 
same person. In the eleventh chapter of the Hebrews, Moses is said 
to have esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the trea- 
sures of Egypt; a passage of easy interpretation, when it is admitted 
that the Jehovah of the Israelites, whose name and worship Moses pro- 
f2ssed, and ‘Christ, were the same person. For this worship he was 
reproached by the Egyptians, who preferred their own idolatry, and 
treated, as all apostates do, the true religion, the pure worship of former 
ages from which they had departed, with contempt. To be reproached 
for the sake of Jehovah, and to be reproached for Christ, were conver. 
stole phrases with the apostle, because he considered Jehovah and Christ 
.o pe the same person. 

“In St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, we read, ‘ Neither let 


500 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, . [PART 


us tempt Crist, as some of them (that ‘s, the Jews in the wilderness) 
also tempted, and were destroyed by serpents,’ x, 9. ‘The pronoun 
him aurov, must be-understood after ‘tempted,’ and it is found in some 
MSS., though not sufficiently numerous to warrant its insertion in the 
text. It is, however, necessarily implied, and refers to Christ just 
before mentioned. The Jews in the wilderness here are said to have 
tempted some person; and to understand by that person any other than 
Christ, who is just before named, is against all grammar, which never 
allows without absolute necessity any other accusative to be understood 
by the verb than that of some person or thing before mentioned in the 
same sentence. The conjunction xo, also establishes this interpretation 
beyond doubt: ‘Neither let us tempt Curisr as some of them aLso 
tempted’—tempted whom? The answer clearly is, as they also 
tempted Christ. If Christ then was the person whom the Israelites 
tempted in the wilderness, he unavoidably becomes the Jehovah of the 
Old Testament.” (4) 

This is rendered the more striking, when the passage to which the 
apostle refers is given at length. ‘ Ye shai not tempt the Lord your 
God, as ye tempted him in Massah.” Now what could lead the apos- 
tle to substitute Christ, in the place of the Lord your God? “ Neither 
let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted” Christ, for that is 
the accusative which must be supplied. Nothing certainly but that the 
idea was familiar to him, that Christ, and the Angel Jehovah, who con. 
ducted and governed the Israelites, were the same person. 

Heb. xii, 25, 26: “See that ye refuse not him that speaketh; for if 
they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall 
not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven. 
Whose voice then shook the earth, but now he hath promised,” &c. 

This. passage also is decisive as a proof that the Angel of Jehovah, 
and our Lord, are the same person. “ Him that speaketh from heaven,” 
the context determines to be Christ ; “him that spake on earth,” is pro- 
bably Moses. The “voice” that then ‘shook the earth,” was the voice 
of him that gave the law, at the sound of which the mountain trembled 
and shook. He who gave the law we have already proved, from the | 
authority of Scripture, to have been the Angel of Jehovah. and the 
apostle declares that the same person now speaks to us “ from heaven,” 
in the Gospel, and is therefore the Lord Christ. Dr. Mac Knight says, 
that it was not the Son’s voice which shook the earth, because it was 
not the Son who gave the law. In this he is clearly contradicted by 
St. Stephen, and the whole Jewish history. The proto-martyr in his 


(4) Holden’s Testimonies. See this text, so fatal to the Socinian scheme, 


triumphantly established against the liberty of their criticisms, in Dr. Magee’s 
Postscript to Appendix, p 21], &c. 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 501 


defence, expressly says, that it was “the Angel” who spake with Moses 
0 the mount; and here the Apostle Paul declares, that it was the voice 
of Christ which then shook the earth. Nothing can more certainly 
prove than this collation of Scriptures, that the Son gave the law, and 
that “the Angel” who spake to Moses, and Christ, are the same 
person. 

‘The above passage, in its necessary grammatical construction, so 
certainly marks out Christ as the person whose voice shook the earth 
at the giving of the law, that the Socinians, in their New Version of the 
Testament, have chosen to get rid of a testimony which no criticism 
could evade, by daringly and wilfully corrupting the text itself, and 
without any authority whatever, they read, instead of ‘See that ye 
refuse not him that speaketh,” “See that ye refuse not God that speak 
eth ;” thus introducing a new antecedent. This instance of a wilful 
perversion of the very teat of the word of God, has received its merited 
reprobation from those eminent critics who have exposed the dishonesties, 
the ignorance, and the licentious criticisms, of what is called an “ Im- 
proved Version” of the New Testament. 

These views are confirmed by the testi-nonies of the early fathers, to 
whom the opinions of the apostles, on this subject, (one not at all affected 
by the controversies of the day,) would naturally descend. The opinions 
of the ancient Jews, which are also decidedly confirmatory, will be given 
in their proper place. 

Justin Martyr has delivered his sentiments very freely upon the Divine 
appearances. “ Our Christ,” he says, “conversed with Moses out of 
the bush, in the appearance of fire. And Moses received great strength 
from Christ, who spake to him in the appearance of fire.” Again :— 
“The Jews are justly reproved, for imagining that the Father of all 
things spake to Moses, when indeed it was the Son of God, who is called 
the Angel and the Messenger of the Father. He formerly appeared in 
the form of fire, and without a human shape, to Moses and the other 
prophets : but now—being made a man of the virgin,” &c. 

Irenzeus says, “ The Scripture is full of the Son of God’s appearing: 
sometimes to talk and eat with Abraham, at other times to instruct Noah 
about the measures of the ark; at another time to seek Adam; at an- 
other time to bring down judgment upon Sodom; then again, to direct 
Jacob in the way ; and again, to converse with Moses out of the bush.” 

Tertullian says, “It was the Son who judged men from the beginning, 
destroying that lofty tower, and confounding their languages, punishing 
the whole world with a flood of waters, and raining fire and brimstone 
upon Sodom and Gomorrah, the Lord pouring it down from the Lord: 
-. for he always descended to hold converse with men, from Adam even to 
the patriarchs and prophets, in visions, in dreams, in mirrors, in dark 
sentences, always preparing his way from the beginning~ neither was it 


502 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. . [PART 


possible, that the God who conversed with men upon earth, could be any 
other than that Word which was to be made flesh.” 

Clemens Alexandrinus says, “The Pedagogus appeared to Abraham, 
to Jacob, wrestled with him, and lastly, manifested himself to Moses.” 
Again: ‘Christ gave the world the law of nature, and the written law 
of Moses. Wherefore, the Lord deriving from one fountain both the 
first and second precepts which he gave, neither overlooked those who 
were before the law, so as to leave them without law, nor suffered those 
who ninded not the philosophy of the barbarians to do as they pleased. 
He gave to the one precepts, to the other philosophy, and concluded 
them in unbelief till his coming, when, whosoever believes not is with- 
ow excuse.” 

Origen says, “My Lord Jesus Christ descended to the earth more 
than once. He came down to Esaias, to Moses, and to every one of the 
prophets.” Again :—“ That our blessed Saviour did sometimes become 
as an angel, we may be induced to believe, if we consider the appear- 
ances and speeches of angels, who in some texts have said, ‘I am the 
God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac,’ ” &c. 

Theophilus of Antioch also declares, “that it was the Son of God 
who appeared to Adam immediately after the fall, who, assuming the 
person of the Father and the Lord of all, came in paradise under the 
person of God, and conversed with Adam.” 

The synod of Antioch :—* The Son,” say they, “is sometimes called 
an Angel, and sometimes the Lord ; sometimes God. For it is impious 
to imagine, that the God of the universe is any where called an angel. 
But the Messenger of the Father is the Son, who himself is Lord and 
God: for it is written, The Angel of the great council.” 

Cyprian observes, that “the Angel who appeared to the patriarch is 
Christ and God.” And this he confirms by producing a number of those 
passages from the Old Testament, where it is said, that an Angel of the 
Lord appeared and spake in the name of God. * 

Hilary speaks to the same purpose :—“ He who is called the Angel 
of God, the same is Lord and God. For the Son of God, according to 
the prophet, is the Angel of the great council. That the distinction of 
persons might be entire, he is called the Angel of God; for he who is 
God of God, the same also is the Angel (or Messenger) of God; and 
set, at the same time, that due honour might be paid, he is also called 
Lord and God.” 

St. Basil says, “ Who then is it that is called both an angel and God? 
Is it not He, whose name, we are told, is called the Angel of the great 
Covenant? For though it was in aftertimes that he became the Angel 
of the great Covenant, yet even before that, he did not disdain the title. 
of an Angel. or Messenger.” Again :—*It is manifest to every one, 
that where the same person is styled both an Angel and God, it must be 


ECOND.) THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES 503 


meant of the only begotten, who manifests himself to mankind in different 
generations, and declares the will of the Father to his saints. Where. 
fore, he who, at his appearing to Moses, called himself I am, cannot be 
conceived to be any other person than God, the Word who was in the 
beginning with God.” 

Other authorities may be seen in Waterland’s Defence of Queries, 
that decidedly refutes Dr. Samuel Clarke, who pretends, in order to 
cover his Arianism, that the fathers represent the angel as speaking in 
the person of the Father. 

Two objections to this doctrine, taken from the Scriptures, are 
answered without difficulty. “God, who at sundry times, and in divers 
manners, spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in 
these last days spoken unto us by his Son.” ‘To those only who deny 
the manifestation and agency of the Father in every case in the Old 
Testament, this passage presents a difficulty. God the Father is cer- 
tainly meant by the apostle, and he is said to have spoken by the pro- 
phets. But this is no difficulty to those who, though they contend that 
the ordinary appearances of the Deity were those of the Son, yet allow 
the occasional manifestation of the Father. He is the fountain of inspi- 
ration. ‘The Son is sent by the Father, but the Spirit is sent by the 
Father and by the Son. ‘This is the order in the New Testament, and 
also, as many passages show in the Old. The Spirit sent by the Father, 
qualified the prophets to speak unto “ our fathers.” The apostle, how- 
ever, says nothing more than that there was an agency of the Father in 
sending the prophets, which does not exclude that of the Son also; for 
the opposition lies in the outward visitle and standing means of convey- 
ing the knowledge of the will of God to men, which under the law was 
by mere men, though prophets; under the Gospel, by the incarnate 
Son. Communication by prophets under the law, did not exclude other 
communications by the Son in his Divine character ; and communica- 
tion by the Son under the Gospel, does not exclude other communica- 
tions by apostles, evangelists, and Christian prophets. ‘The text is not 
therefore an exclusive proposition either way. It is not clear, indeed, 
that any direct opposition at all is intended in the text, but a simple 
declaration of the equal authority of both dispensations, and the peculiar 
glory of the latter, whose human minister and revealer was the Son of 
God in our nature. 

The second objection rests upon a passage in the same epistle. “If 
che word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and 
disobedience received a just recompense of reward, how shall we escape 
if we neglect so great salvation, which at first began to be spoken by 
the Lord?” ‘To understand this passage, it is to be noted, that the 
apostle refers to the judicial law of Moses, which had its prescribed 
penalty for every “iransgression and disobedience.” Now this law was 


504 THEOLOGIUAL IsSTITUTES. [PART 


not, like the decalogue, spoken by God himself, but by angels. For 
after the voice of God had spoken the ten commandments, the people 
entreated that God would not speak to them any more. Accordingly, 
Moses says, Deut. v, 22, “These words,” the decalogue, “the Lord 
spake unto all your assembly in the mount, out of the midst of the fire, 
with a great voice, and he added no more, and he wrote them in two 
tables of stone, and delivered them unto me.” The rest, “both the 
judicial and the ceremonial law, was delivered, and the covenant was 
made, by the mediation of Moses: and therefore the apostle says, Gal. 
iii, 19, ‘The law was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator :’ 
hence it is called the law of Moses. And the character given of it in 
the Pentateuch is this,—these are the statutes, and judgments, and laws, 
which the Lord made between him and the children of Israel in Mount 
Sinai, by the hand of Moses.” (Randolph Prel. Theolog.) 

Nor does the apostle’s argument respect the autnor of the law, for no 
one can suppose that angels were its authors, nor the giver of the law, 
for angels have no such authority ; but the medium through which it was 
communicated, or “spoken.” In the case of the decalogue, that 
medium was the Lord, the Angel Jehovah himself in majesty ; but in 
the body of judicial and ceremonial laws, to which he clearly refers, 
angels and Moses. ‘The visible medium by which the Gospel was com- 
municated, was the Son of God made flesh. ‘That word was “spoken 
by the Lord,” not only in his personal, but in his mediatorial character ; 
and, by that wonderful condescension, its importance, and the danger 
of neglecting it, were marked in the most eminent and impressive 
manner. | 

It has now therefore been established that the Angel Jehovah, and 
Jesus Christ our Lord, are the same person; and this is the first great 
argument by which his Divinity is established. He not only existed 
before his incarnation, bu’ is seen at the head of the religious institutions 
of his own Church, up to the earliest ages. We trace the manifesta. 
tions of the same person from Adam to Abraham; from Abraham to 
Moses; from Moses to the prophets; from the prophets to Jesus. 
Under every manifestation he has appeared in the form of God, never 
thinking it robbery to be equal with God. “ Dressed in the appropriate 
robes of God’s state, wearing God’s crown, and wielding God’s sceptre,” 
ne has ever received Divine homage and honour. No name is given to 
ae Angel Jehovah, which is not given to Jehovah Jesus; no attribute 
is ascribed to the one, which is not ascribed to the other; the worship 
which was paid to the one by patriarchs and prophets, was paid to the 
other by evangelists and apostles; and the Scriptures declare them to 
be the same august person,—the image of the Invisible, whom no man 
can see and live ;—the Redeeming Angel, the Redeeming Kinsman, and 
the Redeeming God. 


SECOND. } THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 505 
7 \ 


That the titles with which our Lord is invested are unequivocal decla. 
rations of absolute Divinity, will be the subject of the next chapter 


CHAPTER XII. 


Tue Tires or Curist. 


Various proofs were adduced, in the last chapter, that the visible 
Jehovah of the Old Testament is to be regarded as a Being distinct 
from the Farner, yet having Divine titles ascribed to him, being 
arrayed with Divine attributes, and performing Divine works equal to 
his. That this august Being was the same who afterward appeared as 
“Tue Curist,” in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, was also proved ; 
and the conclusion of that branch of theargument, was, that Jesus 
Christ is, in an absolute sense, a Divine person, and as such, is to be 
received and adored. 

It is difficult to conceive any point more satisfactorily established in 
the Scriptures than the personal appearance of our Lord, during the 
patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations, under a Divine character; but 
this argument, so far from having exhausted the proof of his Godhead, 
is only another in that series of rising steps by which we are, at length, 
conducted to the most unequivocal and ample demonstration of this great 
and fundamental doctrine. 

The next argument is stated ai the head of this chapter. Ifthe titles 
given to Christ are such as can designate a Divine Being, and a Divine 
Being only, then is he, to whom they are by inspired authority 
ascribed, Divine; or, otherwise, the Word of TruTH must stand 
charged with practising a direct deception upon mankind, and that in a 
fundamental article of religion. ‘This is our argument, and we proceed 
to the illustration. 

The first of these titles which calls for our attention is that of Jenovan. 
Whether “the Angel Jehovah” were the future Christ or not, does not 
iffect this case. Even Socinians acknowledge Jesus to be the Mes. 
sith; and if this is one of the titles of the promised Messiah, it is, con- 
4 quently a title of our Lord, and must be ascribed to him by all who 
bulieve Jesus to be the Messiah. 

So many instances of this were given in the preceding chapter, that 
it is unnecessary to repeat them; and indeed the fact, that the name 
Jehovah is applied to the Messiah in many passages of the Old Testa- 
ment, is admitted by the manner in which the argument, deduced from 
this fact, is objected to by our opponents. “The Jewish Cabbalists,” 
says Dr. Priestley, “might easily admit that the Messiah might be 
called Jehovah, without supposing that he was any thing more than a 


306 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, L_PART 


man, who liad no existence before his birth.” “ Several things in the 
Scriptures are called by the name of Jehovah; as, Jerusalem is called 
Jehovah our Righteousness.” (History of Early Opinions.) ‘They are 
not, however, the Jewish interpreters only who give the name Jehovah 
to Messiah; but the inspired prophets themselves, in passages which, 
by the equally inspired evangelists and apostles, are applied to Jesus. 
No instance can be given in which any being, acknowledged by all to 
be a created being, is called Jehovah in the Seriptures, or was so called 
among the Jews. The peculiar sacredness attached to this name 
among them was a sufficient guard against such an application of it in 
their common language; and as for the Scriptures, they explicitly 
represent it as peculiar to Divinity itself. “Zam Jnuovan, that is my 
name, and my glory will I not give to another.” “I am Jenovau, and 
there is nune else, there is no God beside me.” “ Thou, whose NAME 
ALONE is JEHOVAH, art the most high, above all the earth.” The pecu 
liarity of the name is often strongly stated by Jewish commentators, 
which sufficiently refutes Dr. Priestley, who affirms that they could not, 
on that account, conclude the Messiah to be more than aman. Kimschi 
paraphrases Isaiah xliii, 8, “Jenovan, that is my name”—* that name 
ts proper to me.” On Hosea xii, 5, ‘ Jenovan his memorial,” he says, 
“Jn the name El and Elohim, he communicates with others ; but, in 
this name, he communicates with none.” Aben Ezra, on Exodus iii, 
14, proves, at length, that this name is proper to God. (Hoornbeck, 
Socin. Confut.) 

It is, surely, a miserable pretence to allege, that this name is some 
times given to places. It is so; but only in composition with some 
other word, and not surely as indicative of any quality in the places 
themselves, but as MeMorrIALS of the acts and goodness of JEHovAH 
himself, as manifested in those localities. So “Jehovah-Jireh, in the 
mount of the Lord it shall be seen,” or, ‘‘ the Lord will see or provide,” 
referred to 111s interposition to save Isaac, and, probably, to the provi- 
sion of the future sacrifice of Christ. The same observation may be 
made as to Jehovah Nissi, Jehovah Shallum, &c: they are names, not 
descriptive of places, but of events connected with them, which marked 
the interposition and character of God himself. It is an unsettled point 
imong critics whether Jah, which is sometimes found in composition ay 
a proper name of a man, as Abijah, Jehovah is my father, Adonijah, 
Jehovah is my lord, be an abbreviation of Jehovah or not, so that the 
case will afford no ground of argument. But if it were, it would avail 
nothing, for it is found onty in a combined form, and evidently relates 
not to the persons who bore these names, as a descriptive appellatio.., 
but to some connection which existed, ur was supposed to exist, between 
them and the Jenovan they acknowledged as their God. The cases 
wouid have been parallel, had our Lord been called Abjah, “ Jehovah 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, 507 


is my father,” or Jedediah, “the beloved of Jehovah.” Nothing, in that 
case, would have been furnished, so far as mere name was concerned, 
to distinguish him from his countrymen bearing the same appellatives ; 
but he is called Jehovah himself, a name which the Scriptures give to 
no person whatever, except to each of the sacred Turex, who stand 
forth, in the pages of the Old and New Testaments, crowned with this 
supreme and exclusive honour and eminence. 

Nor is it true, that in Jeremiah xxxiii, 16, Jerusalem is called *“ Jeho. 
vah our Righteousness.” The parallel passage in the same book, chap. 
<xill, 5, 6, sufficiently shows that this is not the name of Jerusalem, but 
the name of “ Tur Brancu.” Much criticism has been bestowed upon 
these passages to establish the point, whether the clause ought to be 
rendered, ‘“ And this is the name by which the Lord shall call him, our 
Righteousness ;” or “this is the name by which he shall be called, the 
Lord our Righteausness ;” which last has, I think, been decisively esta- 
blished ; but he would be a very exceptionable critic who should con- 
clude either of them to be an appellative, not of Messiah, but of Jerusa- 
lem, contrary both to the scope of the passage and to the literal render 
ing of the words, words capable ef somewhat different constructions, but 
in no case capable of being applied either to the people of Judah, or to 
the city of Jerusalem. 

The force of the argument from the application of the name Jehovah 
to Messiah may be thus stated :— 

Whatever belongs to Messiah, that may and must be attributed to 
Jesus, as being the true and only Christ; and accordingly we have seen, 
that the evangelists and apostles apply those passages to our Lord, in 
which the Messiah is uncauivocally called Jehovah. But this is the 
peculiar and appropriate name of God; that name by which he is dis- 
tinguished from all cther beings, and which imports perfections so high 
and appropriate to the only living and true God, such as self existence 
and eternity, that it can, in truth, be a descriptive appellation of no other 
being. It is, however, solemnly and repeatedly given to the Messiah ; 
and, unless we can suppose Scripture to contradict itself, by making that 
a peculiar name which is not peculiar to him, and to establish an 
inducement to that idolatry which it so sternly condemns, and an excuse 
for it, then this adorable name itself declares the absolute Divinity of 
him who is invested with it, and is to him, as weil as to the Father, a 
name of revelation, a name descriptive of the attributes which can per- 
tain only to essential Godhead. 

This conclusion is corroborated by the constant use of the title 
« Lorp” as an appellation of Jesus, the Messiah, when manifest in the 
flesh. His disciples not only applied to him those passages of the Old 
Testament, in which the Messias is called Jehovah, but-salute and wor- 
ship him by a title which is of precisely the same original import, and 


BOR THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, [PART 


which is, therefore, to be considered in many places of the Septuagint 
and the New Testament, an exact translation of the august name 
Jehovah, and fully equivalent to it in its import. (5) It is allowed, that 11 
is also used as the translation of other names of God, which import simply 
dominion, and that it is applied also to merely human masters and 
rulers. It is not, therefore, like the Jehovah of the Old Testament, an 
incommunicable name, but, in its highest sense, it is universally allowed 
to belong to God; and if, in this highest sense, it is applied to Christ, 
then is the argument valid, that in the sacred writers, whether used to 
express the self and independent existence of him who bears it, or that 
dominion which, from its nature and circumstances, must be Divine, it 
contains a notation of true and absolute Divinity. 

The first proof of this is, that, both in the Septuagint and by the 
writers of the New Testament, it is the term by which the name Jeho- 
vah is translated. The Socinians have a fiction that Kupiog properly 
answers to Adonai, because the Jews were wont, in reading, to substi- 
tute that name in place of Jehovah. But this is sufficiently answered 
by Bishop Pearson, who observes, that ‘it is not probable that the LXX 
should think Kupiog to be the proper interpretation of +33, and yet give 
it to Jehovah, only in the place of Adonai ; for if they had, it would 
have followed, that when Adonai and Jehovah had met in one sentence, 
they would not have put another word for Adonai, and placed Kupiog for 
Jehovah, to which, of itself, according to their observation, it did not 
belong.” “ The reason also of the assertion is most uncertain ; for, 
though it be confessed that the Masoreths did read Adonai, when they 
found Jehovah, and Josephus before them expresses the sense of the 
Jews of his age, that the rerpayayujarov was not to be pronounced, and 
before him Philo speaks as much, yet it followeth not from thence that 
the Jews were so superstitious above three hundred years before, which 
must be proved before we can be assured that the LXX read Ado ai for 
Jehovah, and for that reason translated it Kupsog.” (Discourses on 
Creed.) ‘The supposition is, however, wholly overturned by several 
passages, in which such an interchange of the names could not be made 
in the original, without manifestly depriving them of all meaning, and 
which absurdity could not, therefore, take place in a translation, and be 
thus made permanent. It is sufficient to instance Exodus vi, 2, 3, “1 
am the Lord, (Jehovah :) I appeared ,unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and 
unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name Jenovau 
was I not known unto them.” ‘This, it is true, is rather an obscure f as- 
sage ; but, whatever may be its interpretation, this is clear, that a sub 


(5) Bishop Pearson, on the second article of the Creed, thus concludes a 
learned note on the etymology of Kvpios, Lord: ‘¢ From all which it undeniably 
appeareth, that the ancient signification of Kvpw is the same with ew, or vrapye 
sum, | am” 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 509 


stitution of Adonai for Jehovah would deprive it of all: meaning whatever, 
and yet here th» LXX translate Jehovah by Kupios. 

Kupios, Lord, is, then, the word into which the Greek of the Septua- 
giut renders the name Jehovah ; and, in all passages in which Messias 
is called by that peculiar title of Divinity, we have the authority of this 
version to apply it, in its full and highest signification, to Jesus Christ, 
who is himself that Messias.. For this reason, and also because, as mun 
imspired, they were directed to fit and proper terms, the writers of the 
New Testament apply this appellation to their Master, when they quote 
these prophetic passages as fulfilled in him. They found it used in the 
Greek version of the Old Testament, in its highest possible import, as a 
rendering of Jehovah. Had they thought Jesus less than God, they 
ought to have avoided, and must have avoided, giving to him a title 
which would mislead their readers; or else have intimated, that they 
did not use it in its highest sense as a title of Divinity, but in its very 
lowest, as a term of merely human courtesy, or, at best, of human 
dominion. But we have no such intimation; and, if they wrote under 
the inspiration of the Spirit of Truth, it follows, that they used it as 
being understood to be fully equivalent to the title Jehovah itself. This 
their quotations will show. The Evangelist Matthew (iii, 3) quotes and 
applies to Christ the celebrated prophecy of Isaiah xl, 3: “For this is 
he that was spoken of by the Prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one 
crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his 
paths straight.” The other evangelists make the same application of 
it, representing John as the herald of Jesus, the “JeHovan” of the 
prophet, and their “ Kupiog.” It was, therefore, in the highest possible 
sense that they used the term, because they used it as fully equivalent 
to Jehovah. So again, in Luke i, 16, 17: “ And many of the children 
of Israel shall he turn to rae Lorp truer Gop, and he shall go before 
Him in the spirit and power of Elias.” “Him,” unquestionably refers 
to “the Lord their God ;” and we have here a proof that Christ bears 
that eminent title of Divinity, so frequent in the Old Testament, “the 
Lorp Gop,” Jehovah Aleim; and also that Kupiog answered, in the view 
of an inspired writer, to the name Jehovah. On this point the Apostle 
Paul also adds his testimony, Romans x, 13, “ Whosoever shall call upon 
the name of the Lerp shall be saved ;”’ which is quoted from Joel ii, 32, 
«¢ Whosoever shall call on the name of Jenova shall be delivered.” 
Other passages might be added, but the argument does not rest upon 
their number; these are so explicit, that they are amply sufficient to 
establish the important conclusion, that, in whatever senses the term 
“ Lord” may be used, and though the writers of the New Testament, 
like ourselves, use it occasionally in a lower sense, yet they use it also 
in its highest possible sense, and in its loftiest signification when they 


51U | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. IPART 


intended it to be understood as equivalent to Jehovah, and, in that sense 
they apply it to Christ. 

But, even when the title “ Lorp” is not employed to render the name 
Jehovah, in passages quoted from the Old Testament, but is used as the 
common appellation of Christ, after his resurrection, the disciples so 
connect it with other terms, and with circumstances which so clearly 
imply Divinity, that it cannot reasonably be made a question but. that 
they themselves considered it as a Divine title, and intended that i 
should be so understood by their readers. In that sense they applied it 
to the Father, and it is clear, that they did not use it in a lower sense 
when they gave it to the Son. It is put absolutely, and by way of emt- 
nence, “tHE Lorp.” It is joined with “ Gop ;” so in the passage above 
quoted from St. Luke, where Christ is called the Lorp Gop; and when 
Thomas, in an act of adoration, calls him “ My Lorp and my Gop.” 
When it is used to express dominion, that dominion is represented as 
absolute and universal, and, therefore, Divine. ‘‘ He is Lorp of all.” 
“Kine of kings and Lorp of lords.” “'Thou, Lorp, in the beginning 
hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of 
thy hands. They shall perish; but thou remainest: and they all shall 
wax old, as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt thou change them, 
and they shall be changed; but thou art the same, and thy years shall 
not fail.” 

Thus, then, the titles of “ Jehovah” and “ Lord” both prove the Divi- 
nity of our Saviour; “ for,” as it is remarked by Dr. Waterland, “if 
Jehovah signify the eternal, immutable God, it is manifest that the name 
is incommunicable, since there is but one God; and, if the name be 
incommunicable, then Jehovah can siznify nothing but that one God, to 
whom, and to whom only, it is applied. And if both these parts be true, 
and if it be true, likewise, that this name is applied to Christ, the conse- 
quence is irresistible, that Christ isthe same one God, not the same 
person, with the Father, to whom also the name Jehovah is attributed, 
but the same substance, the same being, in a word, the same Jehovah, 
thus:revealed to be more persons than one.” 

Gop. ‘That this title is attributed to Christ is too obvious to be 
wholly denied, though some of the passages which have been alleged 
as instances of this application of the term have been controverted. 
Even in this a great point is gained. Jesus Christ is called God: this 
the adversaries of his Divinity are obliged to confess, and this confes- 
sion admits, that the letter of Scripture is, therefore, in favour of orthodox 
opinions. It is, indeed, said, that the term God, like the term Lor», 1s 
used in an inferior sense ; but nothing is gained by this; nothing is, on 
that account, proved uvainst the Deity of Christ; for it must still be 
allowed, that it is a term used in Scripture to express the Divine nature, 
and that it is so used generally. ‘The question, therefore, is only 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. oll 


limited to this, whether our Lord is called God, in the highest sense of 
that appellation. ‘This might, indeed, be argued from those passages in 
the Old Testament in which the title is given to the acting, manifested 
Jehovah, “the Lord God” of the Old Testament ; but this having been 
anticipated, I confine myself chiefly to the evangelists and apostles. 

Before that proor is adduced, which will most unequivocally show 
that Jesus Christ is called God, in the highest sense of that term, it will, 
however, be necessary to show that, in its highest sense, it involves the 
notion of absolute Divinity. This has been denied: Sir Isaac New- 
ton, who, on theological subjects, as Bishop Horsley observes, ‘“ went 
out like a common man,” says that the word God “is a relative term, 
and has a regard to servants; it is true, it denotes a Being eternal, 
infinite, and absolutely perfect; but a Being, however eternal, infinite, 
and absolutely perfect, without dominion, would not be God.” (Philos. 
Nat. Mathe. in calce.) ‘This relative notion of the term, as itself 
importing strictly nothing more than dominion, was adopted by Dr. S. 
Clarke, and made use of to support his semi-Arianism ; and it seems to 
have been thought, that, by confining the term to express mere sove- 
reignty, the force of all those passages of Scripture in which Christ is 
called God, and from which his absolute Divinity is argued, might be 
avoided. His words are, “The word @éo¢, God, has, in Scripture and 
in all books of morality and religion, a relative signification, and not, as 
in metaphysical books, an absolute one: as is evident from the relative 
terms which, in moral writings, may always be joined with it. For 
instance: in the same manner as we say my father, my king, and the 
like ; so it is proper also to say my God, the God of Israel, the God 
of the universe, and the like. Which words are expressive of dominion 
and government. But, in the metaphysical way, it cannot be said my 
Infinite Substance, the Infinite Substance of Israel, or the like.” 

To this Dr. Waterland’s reply is an ample confutation. “TI shall 
only observe here, by the way, that the word sTar is a relative word, 
for the same reason with that which the doctor gives for the other. 
For the star of your god Remphan (Acts vii, 43) is a proper expres- 
sion; but, in the metaphysical way, it cannot be said, the luminous 
substance of your god Remphan. So again, water is a relative word ; 
for it is proper to say the water of Israel ; but, in the metaphysical way, 
it cannot be said, the fluid substance of Israel. The expression is 
improper. (6° By parity of reason, we may make relative words almost 


(6) It is very obvious to perceive where the impropriety of such expressions 
fies. The word suhstance, according to the common use of language, when used 
in the singular number, 1s supposed to be intrinsic to the thing spoken of, whose 
substance it is; and, indeed, to be the thing itself. My substance is myself ; 
and the substance of Jsrael is Israel. And hence it evinces to be improper to 
join substance with the relative terms, urderstanding it of any thing intrinsic. 


512 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


ds many as we please. But to proceed: I maintain that dominion is 
not the full import of the word God in Scripture; that it is but a part 
of the idea, and a small part too; and that if any person be called God, 
merely on account of dominion, he is called so by way of figure and 
resemblance only ; and is not properly God, according to the Scripture 
notion of it. We may call any one a KrN@, who lives free and indey end- 
ent, subject to no man’s will. He is 2 king so far, or in some respects 5 
though, in many other respects, nothing like one; and, therefore, not 
properly a king. If, by the same figure of speech, by way of allusion 
and resemblance, any thing be culled Gop, because resembling God in 
one or more particulars, we are not to conclude that it is properly and 
truly God. 

“To enlarge something farther upon this head, and to illustrate the 
case by a few instances. Part of the idea which goes along with the 
word God is, that his habitation is sublime, and lis dwelling not with 
flesh, Dan. ti, 11. This part of the zdea is applicable to angels or to 
saints, and therefore they may thus far be reputed gods; and are some- 
times so styled in Scripture or ecclesiastical writings. Another part of 
the complex idea of God is giving orders from above, and publishing 
commands from heaven. This was, in some sense,.applicable to Moses, 
who is, therefore, called a god unto Pharaoh; not as being properly a 
god; but instead of God, in that instance, or that resembling circum- 
stance. In the same respect, every prophet or apostle, or even a 
minister of a parish, might be figuratively called God. Dominion goes. 
along with the idea of God, or is a proof of it; and, therefore, kings, 
princes, and magistrates, resembling God in that respect, may, by the 
like figure of speech, be styled gods: not properly ; for then we might 
as properly say God David, God Solomon, or God Jeroboam, as King 
David, &c ; but by way of allusion, and in regard to some imperfect 
resemblance which they bear to God in some particular respects ; and 
that is all, It belongs to God to receive worship, and sacrifice, and 
homage. Now, because the heathen idols so far resembled God as to 
be made the objects of worship, &c, therefore they also, by the same 
figure of speech, are by the Scripture denominated gods, though, at the 
same time, they are declared, in a proper sense, to be no gods. The 
Selly is called the god of the luxurious, Phil. in, 19, because some are 
as much devoted to the service of their bellies as others are to the 
service of God, and because their lusts have got the dominion over them. 
This way of speaking is, in like manner, grounded on some imperfect 
resemblance, and is easily understood. ‘The prince of the devils is sup- 
posed by most interpreters, to be called the god of this world, 2 Cor. 
iv, 4. If so, the reason may be, either because the men of this world 
are entirely devoted to his service; or that he has got the power and 
dominion over them. 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 513 


“Thus we see how the word God, according to the popular way of 
speaking, has been applied to angels, or to men, or to things inanimate 
and insensible ; because some part of the idea belonging to God has been 
conceived to belong to them also. To argue from hence that any of 
them is properly God, is making the whole of a part, and reasoning 
fal'aciously, a dicto secundum quid, as the schools speak, ad dictum sim. 
pliciter. If we inquire carefully irto the Scripture notion of the word, 
we shall find that neither dominion singly, nor all the other instances 
of resemblance, make up the idea; or are sufficient to denominate any 
thing properly God. When the prince of Tyre pretended to be God, 
Ezek. xxviii, 2, he thought of something more than mere dominion to 
make him so. He thought of strength invincible and power irresistible, 
and God was pleased to convince him of his folly and vanity, not by 
telling him how scanty his dominion was, or how low his office ; but how 
weak, frail, and perishing his nature was; that he was man only, and 
not God, Ezek. xxviii, 2-9, and should surely find so, by the event. 
When the Lycaonians, upon the sight of a miracle wrought by St. Paul, 
Acts xiv, 11, took him and Barnabas for gods, they did not think so 
much of dominion as of power and ability, beyond human; and when 
the apostles answered them, they did not tell them that their dominion 
was only human, or that their ofice was not Divine ; but that they had 
not a Divine nature. They were weak, frail, and feeble men; of like 
infirmities with the rest of their species, and, therefore, no gods. 

“If we trace the Scripture notion of what is truly and properly God, 
we shall find it made up of these several ideas: infinite wisdom, power 
invincible, all-sufficiency, and the like. These are the ground and 
foundation of dominion, which is but a secondary notion, a consequence 
of the former; and it must be dominion supreme, and none else, which 
will suit with the Scripture notion of God. It is not that of a governor, 
a ruler, a protector, a lord, or the like, but a sovereign Ruler, an almighty 
Protector, an omniscient and omnipresent Governor, an eternal, immuta- 
ble, all-sufficient Creator, Preserver, and Protector. Whatever falls 
short of this is not properly, in the Scripture notion, God, but is only 
called so by way of figure, as has before been explained. Now, if you 
ask me why the relative terms may properly be applied to the word God, 
the reason is plain, because there is something relative in the whole idea 
of God, namely, the notion of governor, protector, &c. If you ask why: 
he" cannot so properly be applied tc the word God in the metaphysical 
sense, beside the reason before given, there is another as plain, because 
metaphysics, taking in only one part of the idea, consider the nature ab- 
stracted from the relation, leaving the relative part out.” 

To these observations may be added the argument of Dr. Randolph. 
(Vindication of Christ's Divinity.) “If Gop be a relative term, which 


bas reference to subjects, it follows that when there were no subjects 
Voz. I. 33 7 


514 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. PAUP 


there was no God; and, consequently, either the creatures must have 
been some of them eternal, or there must have been a time when there 
was no God.” The matter, however, is put beyond all doubt, by the 
‘express testimony that it is not dominion only, but excellence of nature 
and attributes exclusively Divine which enter into the notion of God. 
Thus, in Psalm xe, “‘ Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever 
thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to ever 
lasting, thou art Gop.” Here the idea of eternity is attached to the 
term, and he is declared to be Gop “from everlasting,” and, conse 
quently, before any creature’s existence, and so before he could have 
any “ subjects,” or exercise any “dominion.” 

The import of the title Gop, in its highest sense, being thus established 
to include all the excellencies and glories of the Divine nature, on which 
alone such a dominion as is ascribed to God could be maintained, if that 
title be found ascribed to Christ, at any period, in this its highest sense, 
it will prove, not, as the Arians would have it, his dominion only, but his 
Divinity ; and it is_no answer to this at all to say that men are sometimes 
called gods in the Scripture. In the New Testament the term God, in the 
singular, is never applied to anv man; and it is even a debated matter, 
whether it is ever a human appellation, either in the singular or the 
plural, in the Old Testament, the passages quoted being probably ellipti- 
eal, or capable of another explanation. (7) But this is not important: 
if, in its highest sense, it is found used of Christ, it matters not to how 
many persons it is applied in its lower, or as a merely figurative appel- 
lation. 

Matthew i, 23: “ Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled 
which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold a virgin 
shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his 
name EMMANUEL, which being interpreted is, Gop with us.” This is 
a portion of Scripture which the Socinians, in their ‘“‘ Improved Version,” 
have printed in italics, as of ‘ doubtful authority,” though, with the:same 
breath, they allow that it is found “in all the manuscripts and versions 
which are now extant.” The ground, therefore, on which they have 
rested their objection is confessedly narrow and doubtful, and frail as it 


(7) Exodus vii, 1: ‘‘See I have made thee a god to Pharaoh.” This seems to 
be explained by chapter iv, 16: ‘*Thou shalt be to him instead of God.” Psalin 
Ixxxii, 1: ‘‘God standeth in the congregation of the mighty: [Heb. of God:] he 
judgeth among the gods.” This passage is rendered by Parkhurst, ‘‘ The Aleim 
stand in the congregation of God; in the midst the Aleim will judge.” And op — 
verse 6, ‘I have said ye are gods,” he: supposes an ellipsis of Caph, *‘ I have said 
ye are as gods.” As this is spoken of judges, who were professedly God’s vice- 
gerents, this is a very natural ellipsis, and there appears nothing against it in the 
argument of our Lord, John x, 34. The term, as used in all these passages, does 
not so much appear to be used in a lower sens. as by figurative application and 
ellipsis. 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. d15 


is, it has been entirely taken from them, and the authority of this serip- 
ture fully established. (Vide Nare’s Remarks on the New Version.) The 
reason of an attempt, at once so bold and futile, to expunge this passage, 
and the following part of St. Matthew’s history which is connected with 
‘t, may be found in the explicitness of the testimony which it bears to 
our Lord’s Divinity, and which no criticism could evade. The prophecy 
which is quoted by the evangelist has its difficulties ; but they do nct in 
the least affect the argument. Whether we can explain Isaiah or not, 
that is, whether we can show in what manner the prophecy had a 
primary accomplishment in the prophet’s day or not, St. Matthew is 
sufficiently intelligible. He tells us, that the words spoken by the pre- 
phet were spoken of Christ; and that his miraculous conception took 
place, “that,” an order that, “they might be fulfilled ;” a mode of ex- 
pression so strong, that even those who allow the prophets to be quoted 
sometimes by way of accommodation by the writers ‘of the New Testa- 
ment, except this instance, as having manifestly, from the terms used, 
the form of an argument, and not of a mere allusion. (8) Farther, says 
the sacred historian, “and they shall call his name Emmanuel ;” that is, 
according to ine idiom of Scripture, where any thing is said to be called 
what it in reality is, he shall be “ Emmanuel,” and the interpretation is 
added, “ Gop with us.” : 

It is indeed objected, that the Divinity of Christ can no more be argued 
from this title of Emmanuel than the divinity of E11, whose name signi- 
fies my God, or of Elihu, which imports my God himself ; but it is to be 
remarked, that by these names such individuals were commonly and 
constantly known among those with wnom they lived. But Immanuel 
was not the personal name of our Lord, he was not so called by his 
friends and countrymen familiarly ; the personal name which he received 
was Jesus, by Divine direction, and by this he was known to the world. 
It follows, therefore, that Immanuel was a descriptive title, a name of 
revelation, expressive of his Divine character. It is clear, also, that in 
this passage he is called God; and two circumstances, in addition to 
that just mentioned, prove that the term is used in its full and highest 
sense. In Isaiah, from which the passage is quoted by the evangelist, 
the land of Judea is called the land of this Immanuel more than seven 
centuries before he was born. ‘And he (the Assyrian) shall pass 
through Judah ; he shall overflow and go over, he shall reach even to 
the neck, and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy 
land, O Immanuzt,” chap. viii, 8. Thus is Christ, according to the 
argument in a former chapter, represented as existing before his birth in 
Judea, and, as the God ot’ the Jews, the proprietor of the land of Israel. 


8) ‘* Formula citandi qua Evangelista utitur cap. 1, 22, rovro de odov yeyover; eva 
rAnowS To onSsv manifeste este argumentantis, non comparantis, que magnopere 
diversa est ab alia ejusdem Evangeliste, et aliorum,” &c. (Dathe, in Jsa vii, 4.3 


516 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 'PART 


This also vives the true explanation of St. Jchn’s words, “Ile came 
unto his own, [nation] and his own [people] received him not.” The 
second circumstance which proves the term God, in the title Immanuel, 
to be used in its highest sense is, that the same person, in the following 
chapter of Isaiah, is called “God,” with the epithet of “ mighty,”-- 
“ Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mrienry Gop.” Thus, as Bishop Pearson 
observes, “ First he is ‘Immanu,’ that is, with us, for he hath lwel 
among us; and when he parted from the earth, he said to his disciples, 
‘lam with you alway, even to the end of the world.’ Secondly, he is 
Ex, and that name was given him, as the same prophet testified, ‘his 
name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mienry Gop.’ He 
then who is both properly called Ex, that is God, and is also really 
Immanu, that is, with us, must infallibly be that ‘Immanugt,’ who is 
‘Grod with us.’ No inferior Deity, but invested with the full and com- 
plete attributes of absolute Divinity—‘the Mighty God.’ ” 

In Luke i, 16, 17, it is said of John Baptist, “ And many of the chil- 
dren of Israel shali he turn to the Lorp rHerr Gop, and he shall go 
before u1M in the spirit and power of Elias.” ‘This passage has been 
already adduced to prove that the title “ Lorp” is used of Christ in the 
import of Jenovan. But he is called rue Lorp their Gop, and, as the 
term Lorp is used in its highest sense, so must also the term Gop, 
which proves that this title is given to our Saviour in its fullest and most 
extended meaning —“ to Jehovah their God,” or “ to their God Jehovah,” 
for the meaning is the same. 

John i, 1: “In the beginning was the Worp, and the Worp was 
with Gop, and the Word was Gop.” When we come to consider the 
title “Tum Worp,” Aoyos, this passage will be examined more at large. 
Here it is adduced to prove that the Logos, by whom all understand 
Christ, is called Gop in the highest sense. 1. Because when it is used 
of the Father, in the preceding clause, it must be used in its full import. 
2. Because immediately to call our Lord by the same name as the 
Father, without any hint of its being used in a lower sense, would have 
been to mislead the reader on a most important question, if St. John had 
not regarded him as equal to the Father. 3. Because the creation is 
ascribed to the “ Word,” who is called God. « All things were made 
by him, and without him was not any thi g made that was made.” By 
this the absolute Divinity of Christ is infallibly determined, unless we 
should run into the absurdity of supposing it possible for a creature tc 
create, and not only to create all other created things, but himself also. 
For, if Christ be not God, he is a creature ; and if “not any thing that 
was made,” was made “ without him,” then he made himself. 

This decided passage, as may be supposed, has been subjected to much 
critical serutiny by the enemies of the faith, and many attempts have 
been made to resist its force. It is objected, that the Father is called 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 517 


3 Seog, and the “ Word” simply 3¢os, without the article. To which Dr. 
Middleton replies: (Doctrine of the Greek Article.) 

“ Certain critics, as is well known, have inferred from the ncn 
of the article in this place, that deog is here used in a subordinate sense ; 
it has, however, been so satisfactorily answered that in whatever ac- 
ceptation 42 2¢ is to be taken, it properly rejects the article, being here the 
|redicate of the proposition; and Bengel instances the LXX, 1 Kings 
xvul, 24, srog soc, as similar to the present passage. It may be added, 
that if we had read 6 Seog, the proposition would have assumed the con- 
vertible form, and the meaning would have been, that whatever may be 
affirmed or denied of God the Father, may also be affirmed or denied 
of the Logos, a position which would accord as little with the trinitarian 
as with the Socinian hypotheses. It is, therefore, unreasonable to infer, 
that the word éso¢ is here used in a lower sense; for the writer could 
not have written ‘O dog without manifest absurdity.” 

In many passages too, in which, without dispute, Szog,is ineant of the 
Supreme Being, the article is not used. Matthew xix, 26, “ With men 
this is impossible, but with God (dew) all things are possible.” Luke 
xvi, 13, “ Ye cannot serve (Jew) and mammon.” John i, 18, “ No man 
hath seen God (dgov) at any time.” John ix, 33, “If this man were not 
of God (éeov) he could do nothing.” John xvi, 30, “ By this we believe 
that thou camest from God,” (ééov.) Many other instances might be 
given, but these amply reply to the objection. 

To evade the force of the argument drawn from the creation being 
ascribed to the Word, a circumstance which fixes his title “ Gop” in 
its highest possible sense, it is alleged, that the word yivowos never sig- 
nifies to create, and the Socinian version, therefore, renders the text, 
« All things were done by him,” and the translators inform us, in a note, 
this means, that “all things in the Christian dispensation were done by 
Christ, that is, by his authority.” But what shall we say to this bold 

assertion, that yivowcu is never used with reference to creative acts in 
the New Testament, when the following passages may be adduced in 
refutation? Heb. iv, 3, “ Although the works were rrnisHep from the 
foundation of the world.” Heb. xi, 3, “So that bee which are seen 
were not MADE of things that do appear.” James i, 9, “ Men which 
are made after the similitude of God.” In all these sisal and in 
some places of the Septuagint also, that very word is used which, they 
tell us, never expresses, in Scripture, the notion of creation. Even the 
same chapter, verse 10, gives an instance of the same use of the word. 
“He was in the world, and the world was made (¢yevero) by him.” For 
this, of course, they have a criticism; but the manner in which this 
passage, so directly in refutation of their assertion, is disposed of in their 
«Improved Version,” is a striking confirmation of the entire impossi- 
bility of accommodating Scripture to their system. ‘“ ‘The world was 


e 
518 THEOLOG'CAL INSTITUTES, [PART 


? 


made by him,” sa¥s the evangelist. “The world was enlightened by 
nim,” say the Socinian translators, without the slightest authority, and 
in entire contradiction to the scope of the passage. Why did they not 
render the word asin the preceding verse, “'The world was done by 
him ?”’? which, in point of fact, makes no difference in the sense, when 
rightly considered. ‘The doing, ascribed to the Eternal Word, is of a 
specific character,—doing in the sense of framing, making, or creating 
(ravra) © all things.” 

‘The Socinians have not, however, fully satisfied themselves with this 
notable criticism in their “Improved Version ;” and some of them, there- 
fore, render “all things were made by him,” “all things were made for 
him.” But these criticisms cannot stand together. If the verb ywoucs 
is to be deprived of the import of création, then it is impossible to retain 
the rendering of “all things were made for him,” since his own acts of 
ordering the Christian dispensation and “ enlightening” the world could 
not be “ for him,” but must have been done “ by him.” — If, on the con- 
trary, they will have it that all things were done for him, then ywowces 
must be allowed to import creation, or their production by the omnipo- 
tence of God. Both criticisms they cannot hold, and thus they confess 
that one destroys the other. Their rendering of di avrov cannot, how- 
ever, be supported ; for dia, with a genitive, denotes not the final, but 
the efficient cause. (9) The introduction to St. John’s Gospel may, 
therefore, be considered as an mexpugnable proof that Deity, in its high- 
est, and in no secondary or subordinate sense is ascribed to our Saviour, 
under his title God—“and the Word was Gop.” Nor in any other 
than the highest sense of the term God can the confession of Thomas, 
John xx, 28, be understood. ‘And Thomas answered and said unte 
him, my Lorp and my Gop.” ‘The Socinian version, in its note on 
this passage, intimates that it may be considered not as a confession, 
but as an exclamation, “ My Lord! and my God!” thereby choosing to 
put profane, or, at least, vulgar language into the mouth of this apostle, 
of which degradation we have certainly no example in the narration 
of the evangelists. Michaelis has justly observed, that if ‘Thomas had 
spoken German. (he might have added English, French, or Italian,) it 
might have been contended with some plausibility, that “My Lord and 
my God” was only an irreverent ejaculation ; but that Jewish astonish. 
ment was thus expressed is wholly without proof or support. Add to 
this, that the words are introduced with simev avtw, said to him, that 1s, 
to Christ ; a mere ejaculation, such as that here supposed, is rather an 
appeal to Heaven. Our Saviour’s reply makes it absolutely certain, that 
the words of ‘Thomas, though they are in the form of an exclamation, 


(9) So é&a is used throughout St. John’s Gospel ; and in Heb, 1i, 10, it is said 
of the Father. 6c’ ov ra ravra, ‘by whom are all things.” So also Rom. xi, 36. 
“ Of him, andthrough him, 4’ avrov,) and to him are all things.” 


SECOND.| THLOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 519 


amount to a confession of faith, and were equivalent to a direct. asser. 
ion, of our Saviour’s: Divinity. Christ commends Thomas’s acknow. 
.edgment, while he condemns the tardiness with which it is made; but 
so what did this acknowledgment amount?) That Christ was Lorr and 
top. (Middleton.) 

Tn Titus ii, 13, “ Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious ap-. 
pearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ,” our Lord is not 
only called God, but the crear Gop, which marks. the sense in which 
the term is used by the apostle, and gives unequivocal evidence of his 
opinions, on the subject of Christ’s Divinity. Socinian and Arian inter- 
preters tell us, that “the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” are 
two persons, and therefore refer the title “great God” to the Father. 
The Socinian version accordingly renders the text, “the glorious ap- 
pearance of the great God and of our Saviour Jesus Christ.” To this 
interpretation there are satisfactory answers. Dr. Whitby observes :— 

“ Here it deserveth to. be noted, that it is highly probable, that Jesus 
C‘hrist is styled the great God, 1. Because, in the original, the article 
is prefixed only before the great God, and therefcre, seems to require 
this: construction, the appearance of Jesus Christ, the great God and 
our Saviour. 2. Because, as God the Father is not said properly to 
appear, so the word eaipaveim never occurs in the New Testament, but 
when it is applied to Jesus Christ and to some coming of his; the places 
in which it is to be found being only these, 2 Thess. ii, 8; 1 Tim. vi, 14 ; 
2 Tim. 1, 10, and iv, 1, 8. 3. Because Christ is emphatically styled 
‘our hope, ‘the hope of glory :’ Col. i, 23; 1 Tim. i, 1. And lastly, 
because not only all the ancient commentators on the place do so inter- 
pret this text, but the anti-Nicene fathers aiso; Hyppolitus, speaking of 
the appearance of our God and Saviour, Jesus Christ; and Clemens 
of Alexandria, proving Christ to be both God and man, our Creator, and 
the Author of all our good things, from these very words of St. Paul.” 
(Exposition. ) 

Independent of the criticism which rests upon the absence of the 
article, it is sufficient to establish the claim of our Saviour to the title of 
“the great God” in this passage, that empavem, “the appearing,” is 
never, in the New Testament, spoken of the Father, but of the Son 
only ; but, since the time of this critic, the doctrine of the Greek article 
has undergone ample and acute investigation, and has placed new 
guards around this and some other passages of similar construction 
against the perversions of heresy. It has, by these investigations, been 
established, that the Greek idiom forbids ov and dwrnpog to be uader- 
stood except of the same person; and Mr. Granville Sharp, therefore, 
translates the text, “expecting the blessed hope and appearance of out 
great God and Saviour Jesus Christ :” smipaverav rng dokys Tou wEyaror 
Ssou xo Cwrnpos yuav Inowu xpitrou. 


520 THEOLOGICAI INSTITUTES. [PART 


“This interpretation depends upon the rule or canon brought torward 
into notice not many years ago by Mr. Granville Sharp. It excited 
a controversy, and Unitarians either treated it with ridicule, or denied 
its applicability to the New Testament. But after it had been shown 
by Mr. Wordsworth, that most of the texts to which the rule applies 
were understood in the way Mr. Sharp explained them by the ancient 
fathers, who must surely have known the idiom of their native tongue ; 
and after the doctrine of the Greek article had been investigated with 
so much penetration and learning by Dr. Middleton, all who have paid 
attention to the subject have acquiesced in the canon.” (Holden’s Tes- 
tumonies. ) 

This important canon of criticism is thus stated by Dr. Middleton :— 

«“ When two or more attributes, joined by a copulative or copulatives, 
are assumed of the same person or thing, before the first attributive the 
article is inserted, before the remaining ones it is omitted.” ‘The limita- 
tions of this rule may be seen in the learned author’s work itself, with 
the reasons on which they rest. ‘They are found in “names of sub- 
stances, considered as substances, proper names, or names of abstract 
ideas ;” and with such exceptions, and that of plurals occasionally, the. 
rule uniformly holds. (1) 

Another passage in which the appellation God is given to Christ, in a 
connection which necessarily obliges us to understand it in its highest 
sense, is Heb. 1, 8: “ But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O Gop, is 
for ever and ever.” The argument of the apostle here determines the 
sense in which he calls Jesus, the Son, “‘ Gop,” and the views he eter- 
tains of his nature. Angels and men are the only rational created beings 
in the universe which are mentioned by the sacred writers. The apos- 
tle argues that Christ is superior even to angels; that they are but 
ministers, he a sovereign, seated on a throne; that they worship him, 
and that he receives their worship ; that they are creatures, but he crea. 
tor. 'Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the 
earth ; and the heavens are the works of thine hands;” and full of 
these ideas of supreme Divinity, he applies a passage to him out of 
the 45th Psalm, which is there addressed to the Messiah, “ Thy throne, 
O Gop, is for ever and ever.” 

The Socinian version renders the passage, “ But to the Son he saith, 
God is thy throne for ever and ever,” and in this it follows Wakefield 
and some others. 

The first reason given to support this rendering is, that 6 déo¢ is the 
nominative case. But the nominative, both in common and in Attic Greek, 
is often used for the vocative. It is so used frequently by the LXX, 


(1) See Middleton on the Greek article; also, remarks at the close of the Epis. 
‘le to the Ephesians and the Epistle to Titus, in Dr. A. Clarke’s Commentary ; 
Wordworth’s Letters to Sharp: Dr. P. Smith’s Person of Christ. 


§ 


SECOND.} THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 52] 


and by the writers of the New Testament. The vocative form, indeed, 
very rarely occurs in either, the nominative almost exclusively supplying 
its place ; and in this passage it was so taken by the Greek fathers. (2) 
The criticism is, therefore, groundless. 

The second is, that as the words are addressed to Solomon in the 
psalm from which they are quoted, they must be understood to declare, 
that God was the support of his throne. But the opinion that the 
psalm was composed concerning Solomon’s marriage with Pharaoh’s 
daughter, (3) has no foundation, either in Scripture or in antiquity, and 
is, indeed, contradicted by both. On this subject Bishop Horsley 
remarks ; 





“The circumstances which are characteristic of the king, who is the 
hero of this poem, are every one of them utterly inapplicable to Solomon ; 
insomuch, that not one of them can be ascribed to him, without contra- 
dicting the history of his reign. The hero of this poem is a warrior, who 
girds his sword upon his thigh; rides in pursuit of flying foes; makes 
havoc among them with his sharp arrows; and reigns, at last, by con 
quest, over his vanquished enemies. Now, Solomon was no warrior ; he 
enjoyed a long reign of forty years of uninterrupted peace. 

“« Another circumstance of distinction in the great personage celebrated 
by this psalm is his love of righteousness and hatred of wickedness. 
The original expresses, that he had set his heart upon righteousness, and 
bore an antipathy to wickedness. His love of righteousness and hatred 
of wickedness had been so much the ruling principles of his whole con- 
duct, that, for this, he was advanced to a condition of the highest bliss, 
and endless perpetuity was promised to his kingdom. ‘The word we 
render ‘ righteousness,’ in its strict and proper meaning, signifies ‘jus- 
tice,’ or the constant and perpetual observance of the natural distinctions 
of right and wrong in civil society; and principally with respect to 
property in private persons, and, in a magistrate or sovereign, in the 
impartial exercise of judicial authority. But the word we render 
‘wickedness,’ denotes not only ‘injustice,’ but whatever is contrary to 
moral purity in the indulgence of the appetites of the individual, and 
whatever is contrary to a principle of true piety toward God. Now, the 
word ‘righteousness’ being here opposed to this wickedness, must, cer- 
ainly be taken as generally as the word to which it is opposed in a con. 
trary signification. It must signify, therefore, not merely ‘justice,’ in 
the sense we have explained, but purity of private manners, and piety 
toward God. Now, Solomon was certainly, upon the whole, a good 
king, nor was he without piety ; but his love of righteousness, in the 


(2) **Omnes (Patres) uno consensu 6 6cos hoc in loco vocative acceperunt, 
prout in Psalmis frequente a LXX usurpatur, et alioqui familiare est Grescis, 
Atticis presertim, nominandi casum vocative sumere.” (Bishop But.) 

(3) This notion appears to have originated with Calvin. 


HY 3 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTZS, [PART 


large sense in which we have shown the word is to be taken, and his 
antipathy to tle contrary, fell very far short of what the psalmist ascribes 
to his great king, and procured fur him no such stability of his monarchy. 

«« Another circumstance wholly inapplicable to Solomon, is the nume- 
rous progeny of sons, the issue of the marriage, all of whom were to 
be made princes over all the earth. Solomon had but one son, that we 
read of, that ever came to be a king—his son and successor, Rehoboam , 
and so far was he from being a prince over all the earth, that he was nw 
sooner seated on the throne than he lost the greater part of his father’s 
kingdom. 

«For, would it be said of him that his kingdom, which lasted only 
forty years, is elernal ? It was not even eternal in his posterity. And, 
with respect to his loving righteousness and hating wickedness, it but ill 
applies to one who in his old age became an encourager of idolatry, 
through the influence of women. ‘This psalm, therefore, is applicable 
only tothe Christ. Farther, Solomon’s marriage with Pharaohs daughter 
bemg expressly condemned as contrary to the law, 1 Kings xi, 2, to 
suppose that this psalm was cemposed in honour of that event, is, cer- 
tainly, an ill-founded imagination. Estius informs us, that the rabbins, 
in their commentaries, affirm, that Psalm xlv was written wholly concern 
ing the Messiah. Accordingly, they translate the title of the psalm as 
we do, a Song of Loves ; the LXX, wdn vrep rs ayamnrs, a song concerning 
the beloved ; Vulgate, pro dilecio : a title justly given to Messiah, whom 
God, by voices froin heaven, declared his beloved Son. Beside, as the 
word Meschil, which signifies for instruction, (LXX, sig cuveciv, Vulgate, 
ad intellectum,) is inserted in the title, and as no mention is made in the 
psalm of Solomon, from an account of whose loves, as Pierce observes, 
the Jewish Church was not likely to gain much instruction, we are led to 
understand the psalm, not of Solomon, but of Messiah only.” 

The interpretation “God is thy throne,” is, moreover, monstrous, and 
derives no support from any parallel figurative, or elliptical mode of 
expression in the sacred writings—God, the throne of a creature! And, 
finally, as stated by Middleton, had that been the sense of the passage, 
the language requ res that it should have been written, dpovog gov 6 @sog, 
not 6 dpove:, (Doctrine of the Greek Article,) which, on the Socinian 
interpretation, is the predicate of the proposition. So futile are all these 
attempts to shake the evidence which this text gives to the absolute Ged. 
aead of our Saviour. 

« And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us ar 
understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that 
is true, even in his Son Jesus Curist. Tuis Is THE TRUE Gop ANI 
ETERNAL LIFE,” 1 John v, 20. Here our Saviour is called the true Goa 
and eiernal life. ‘The means by which this testimony is evaded, is te 
interpret the clause, “him that is true,” of the Father, and to refer the 


4 


SEUOND., THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. D223 


pronoun this, not to the nearest antecedent, his Son Jesus Christ,” hut 
‘o the most remote, “ him that is true.” All, however, that is pretended 
by the Socinian critics on this passage is, not that this construction must, 
but that it may take place. Yet even this feeble opposition to the 
received rendering cannot be maintained : for, 1. To interpret the clause, 
“him that is true,” of the Father, is entirely arbitrary ; and the scope 
of the epistle, which was to prove that Jesus the Christ was the true Son 
of God, and, therefore, Divine, against those who denied his Divinity, 
and that “he had come in the flesh,” in opposition to the heretics who 
denied his humanity, (4) obliges us to refer that phrase to the Son, and 
not to the Father. 2. If it could be established that the Father was 
intended by “him that is true,” it would be contrary to grammatical 
usage to refer the pronoun this, is the “true God and eternal life,” to the 
remote antecedent, without obvious and indisputable necessity. 

“Whose are the fathers, and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ 
came, who is over all, God blessed for ever,” Rom. ix, 5. 

With respect to this text, it is to be noted,— 

1. That it continues an enumeration of the particular privileges of the 
Jewish nation which are mentioned in the preceding verses, and the 
apostle adds, “ whose are the fathers,” the patriarchs, and prophets, and 
of whom “ the Christ came.” 

2. That he throws in a clause of limitation with respect to the com- 
ing of Christ, ‘‘ according to the flesh,” which clearly states that it was 
only according to the flesh, the humanity of Christ, that he descended 
from the Jewish nation, and, at the same time, intimates, that he was 
more than flesh, or mere human nature. 

3. The sentence does not end here: the apostle adds, ‘who is, over 
all, God blessed for ever ;” a relative expression which evidently reters 
to the antecedent Christ; and thus we have an antithesis, which shows 
the reason why the apostle introduced the limiting clause, “ according to 
the flesh ;” and explains why Christ, an one respect, did descend from 
the Jews; and in another, that this could not be affirmed of him: he 
was “ God over all,” and, therefore, only ‘‘ according to the flesh” could 
he be of human descent. 

4, That this completes the apostle’s purpose to magnify the privileges 
of his nation: after enumerating many others, he crowns the whole by 


(4) These were the docete, who taught that our Lord was a man in appearance 
only, and suffered and died in appearance only. On the contrary, the Cerin- 
thians, and others believed that the Son of God was united to the human nature 
at his baptism, departed from it before his passion, and was reunited to it after 
his resurrection. According to the former, Christ was mun in appearance only ; 
according to the latter, he was the Son of God at the time of nis passion and death 
in appearance only. We see, then, the reason why St. John, who writes against 
these errors, so often calls Christ, ‘‘ him that is true,” true God anc true man, 
not either in appearance only. 


024 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES [PART 


declaring, that “God over all,” when he became incarnate for the sake. 
of human salvation, took a body of the seed of Abraham. 

Criticism has, of course, endeavoured, if possible, tc weaken the argu- 
ment drawn from this lofty and impregnable passage ; but it is of such a 
kind as greatly to confirm the truth. For, in the first place, various 
readings of manuscripts cannot here be resorted to for rendering the 
sense dubious, and all the ancient versions support the present reading, 
It has, indeed, been alleged, on the authority of Grasinus, that though the 
word “ God” is found in all our present copies, it was wanting in those 
of Cyprian, Hilary, and Chrysostom. But this has been abundantly 
proved to be an error, that word being found in the manuscripts and best 
editions of Cyprian and Hilary, and even St. Chrysostom affords decisive 
testimony to the common reading ; in short, “the word God, in this text © 
is found in every known manuscript of this epistle, 7m every ancient 
version extant, and in every father who has had occasion to quote the 
passage ; so that, in truth, there can scarcely be instanced a text in the 
New ‘Testament in which all the ancient authorities more satisfactorily 
agree.” (Magee on Atonement. See also Nares on the New Version.) 
The only method of dealing with this passage left to Arians ard Soci- 
niaus was, therefore, to attempt to obtain a different sense from it by 
shifting the punctuation. By this device some read, “and of whom is 
the Christ, according to the flesh. God, who Is over all, be blessed for 
ever.” Others, “and of whom is the Christ, according to the flesh, 
who is over all. Blessed be God for ever.” A critic of their own, Mr. 
Wakefield, whose authority they acknowledge to be very great, may, 
however, here be turned against them. Both these constructions, he 
acknowledges, appear so awkward, so abrupt, so mcoherent, that he never 
could be brought to relish them in the least degree; (Inquiry into 
Opinions, Sc ;) and Dr. 8. Clarke who was well disposed to evade th:s 
decisive passage, acknowledges that the common reading is the most 
obvious. But independent of the authority of critics, there are several 
direct aud fatal objections to this altered punctuation. It leaves the 
limiting clause, “ according to the flesh,” wholly unaccounted for ; for no 
possible reason can be given for that limitation on the Socinian scheme. 
If the apostle had regarded Christ simply as a man, he could have come 
in no other way than “according to the flesh ;” nor is this relieved at all 
by rendering the phrase, as in their “ Improved Version,” by “ natural 
descent,” for a mere man could only appear among men by “ natural 
descent.” Either, therefore, the clause is a totally unmeaning and an 
iinpertinent parenthesis, or it has respect to the natural antithesis which 
follows—his supreme Divinity, as “ God over all.” Thus the scope of 
the passage prohibits this license of punctuation. To the latter clause 
being considered as a doxology to God the Father, there is an insupera: 
ble, critical difficulty. Dr. Middleton observes :- 


~ 


SRCOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. B25 


“It has been deemed a safer expedient to attempt a construction dif. 
ferent from the received one, by making the whole or part of the clause 
be merely a doxology in praise of the Father, so that the rendering 
will be either ‘God, who is over all, be blessed for ever,’ or, beginning 
at doc, ‘God be blessed for ever.’ These interpretations also have their 
difficulties ; for thus sueyyrog will properly want the article. On the 
first, however, of these constructions, it is to be observed, that in all the 
doxologies both of the LXX and of the New Testament, in which 
gudo7’4T0¢ is used, it is placed at the beginning of the sentence: in the 
New Testament there are five instances, all conspiring to prove this 
usage, and in the LXX about forty. The same arrangement is ob- 
served in the formula of cursING, in which ermaragarog always precedes 
the mention of the person cursed. ‘The reading then would, on this 
construction, rather have been, evAoynrog 6 wy eas mwavruv bog sig TEg 
osmvac.: Against the other supposed doxology, the. objection is. still 
stronger, since that would require us not only to transpose syAcyyro¢, but 
to read ‘O ééog. Accordingly, in all instances, where a doxology is 
meant, we find svAoyyro¢ 6 bsog.”” (Doctrine of Greek Article.) 

Whitby also remarks :— 

“The words will not admit of that interpunction and interpretation ot 
Erasmus, which will do any service to the Arians or Socinians, namely, 
that a colon must be put after the words xarac¢upxa, after the flesh; and 
the words following must be an ecphonema, and grateful exclamation for 
the blessings conferred upon the Jews: thus, God, who is over all, be 
blessed for ever. Yor this exposition is so harsh, and without any like 
example in the whole New Testament, that as none of the orthodox ever 
thought upon it, so I find not that it ever came into the head of any 
Arian. Socinus himself rejects it for this very good reason, that dsog 
evAoyntoc, God be blessed, is an unusual and unnatural construction ; for, 
wherever else these words signify blessed he God, svdoynrog is put 
before God, as Luke i, 68; 2 Cor. 1, 3; Eph. 1, 3; 1 Peter i, 3; and 
dco¢ hath an article prefixed to it; nor are they ever immediately joined 
together ctherwise. ‘The phrase occurs twenty times in the Old Testa- 
ment, but in every place su\oyvnrog goes before, and the article is an- 
nexed to the word God, which is a demonstration that this is a perversion 
of the sense of the apostle’s words.” 

The critical discussion of this text is farther pursued by the writers 
just quoted; by Dr. Nares, in his Remarks; Mr. Wardlaw, in his 
Discourses; Archbishop Magee, and others; and we may confidently 
say of it, with Doddridge, that it is “a memorable text, and contains a 
proof of Christ’s proper Deity, which the opposers of that doctrine have 
never been able, nor will ever be able to answer.” So it was considered 
and quoted “by the fathers,” says Whitby, “ from the beginning ; and,” 
continues the same commentator, “if these words are spoker by the 


326 THEOLOG'CAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


Spirit of Ged concerning Chnst, the arguments hence to prove him 
truly and properly God are invincible ; for, first, 6 deog eas wavrwv, God 
over all, is the periphrasis by which all the heathen philosophers did 
usually represent the supreme God ; and so is God the Father described 
hoth in the Old and New Testament, as 6 sas wavrwv, he that is over all, 
Eph. iv, 6. Secondly, This is the constant epithet and periplirasis ot 
the great God in the Old ‘Testament, that he is suAoynros sig Tov ouwuet, 
God blessed for evermore, 1 Chron. xvi, 36; Psalm xli, 13, and Ixxxix, 
52; and also in the New, where he is styled the God 6¢ e¢riv svAoynzog 
sig T8¢ arwvas, who ts blessed for evermore.” 

Numerous other passages might be cited, where Christ 1s called 
“Gop :” these only have been selected, not merely because the prooi 
does not rest upon the number of Scriptural testimonies, but upon their 
explicitness; but also because they all associate the term God, as applied 
to our Saviour, with other titles, or with circumstances, which demon. 
strate most fully, that that term was used by the inspired penmen in its 
highest sense of true and proper Deity when they applied it to Christ. 
Thus we have seen it associated with Jehovah; with Lord, the New 
Testament rendering of that ineffable name; with acts of creative 
energy, as in the introduction to the Gospel of St. John; with the 
supreme dominion and perpetual stability of the throne of the Son, in 
the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. In the Epistle to Titus, 
he is called “the crear God;” in 1 John, “the rrue Gop,” and the 
giver of “ETERNAL LIFE ;” and in the last text examined, his twofold 
nature is distinguished—man, “ according to the flesh,” and in his higher 
mature. Gop, “God over all, blessed for evermore.” These passages 
stand in full refutation of both the Arian and Socinian heresies. In 
opposition to the latter, they prove our Saviour to be more than man, 
for they assert him to be God ; and in opposition to the latter, they prove 
that he is Ged, not in an inferior sense, but “the great God,” “the true 
God,” and “ God over all, blessed for evermore.” 

I pass over, for the sake of greater brevity, other titles more rarely 
ascribed to our Saviour, such as, the “ Lorp or Guiory,” 1 Cor. ii, 8; 
“KKinG OF KINGS AND LorpD oF LorDs,” on which it would be easy, to 
argue, that their import falls nothing short of absolute Divinity. A few 
remarks on three other titles of our Lord, of more frequent occurrence, 
may close this branch of the argument. These are, ‘* Kine oF IsRAEt ;” 
“Son or Gup;” and “THe Worp.” The first bears evident allusion 
to the pre-existence of Christ, and to his sovereignty over Isruel under 
the law. Now, it has been already established, that the Jehovah, * the 
King of the Jews,” “the Holy One of Israel our King,” “the King, the 
Lord of Hosts,” of the Old Testament, is not the Father; but another 
Divine Person, who, in the New Testament, is affirmed to have beet. 
lesus Christ. ‘This being the view of the sacred writers of the evar 


SECOND. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 527 


gelical dispensation, it is clear that they could not use the appellation 
“Tue Kine or Israet” in a lower sense than that in which it stands 
in the Old Testament ; and there, indisputably, even by the confession 
‘# opponents, it is collocated with titles, and attributes, and works which 
unequivocally mark a Divine character. It is with clear reference to 
this his peculiar property in the Jewish people that St. John says, “ He 
came unto his own, and his own received him not; a declaration which 
ts scarcely sense, if Judea was inno higher a meaning his own country 
(5) than it was the country of any other person who happened to be 
born there ; for it is, surely, a ‘strange method of expressing the simple 
fact that he was born a Jew, (were nothing more intended,) to say that 
he came into his own country, for this every person does at his birth, 
wherever he is born. Nor is it any aggravation of the guilt of the 
Jews, that they rejected merely a countryman, since that circumstance 
gave him no greater claim than that of any other Jew to be received as 
the Messiah. ‘The force of the remark lies in this, that whereas the 
prophets had declared that “‘the King of Israel,” “the Lord of hosts,” 
-« Jehovah,” should become incarnate, and visit his own people; and 
that Jesus had given sufficient evidence that he was that predicted and 
expected personage ; yet the Jews, “ his own people” and inheritance, 
rejected him. ‘The same notion is conveyed in our Lord’s parable, 
when the Jews are made to say “this is the HEIR,” he in whom the 
rights vested : “let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours.” (6) 

It is sufficient, however, here to show, that the title *«« Kine or Israr.” 
was understood, by the Jews, to imply Divinity. Nathanael exclaims, 
“ Rabbi, thou art the Son or Gop, thou art the Kine or Isrart.’ 
This was said upon such a proof of his Messiahship as, from his ac- 
quaintance with some matter private to Nathanael alone when he was 
“under the fig tree,” was a full demonstration of omniscience: a cir- 
cumstance which also determines the Divine import of “ Son or Gop,’ 
the title which is here connected with it. Both were certainly under. 
stood by Nathanael to imply:an assumption of Godhead. 

«¢As our Saviour hung upon the cross,’ says St. Matthew, ‘they that 
passed by reviled him, wagging their heads and saying, Thou that 
destroyest the temple and buildest it in three days, save thyself; if thou 
be the Son or Gop, come down from the cross. Likewise also the 
chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said, He saved 
others; himself he cannot save. If he be the Kine or Israet, let 


(5) ‘** He came into his own country, and his countrymen received him not.” 
(Capp’s Version.) 

(6) Venit ad sua, et sui non receperunt eum, id est, venit ad possessionem 
suam, et qui possessionis ipsius erant, eum non receperunt: quod xplicatur, 
Matt. xxi, ubi filius dicitur missus ad ecclesiam Judaicam ws xxynpovopos es rn 
rdnpovomiav avrs. (Ludov. de Dieu. in loc.) 


528 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. He 
rusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he 
said, [ am rur Son or Gop. The thieves also which were crucified 
with him, cast rue sAME in his teeth. [One of them saying, If thou 
be Curist, save thyself and us; but the other said unto Jesus, Lord, 
remember me, when thou comest into thy kingdom.] [And the soldiers 
also mocked him, coming to him, and offering him vinegar, and saying, 
Ji thou be THe Kine or THE Jews, save thyself.] Now when the 
centurion, and they that were with him watching Jesus, saw the earth 
quake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, 
[Certainly this was a righteous man,] truly this was THe Son or Gop.’ 
Here we see the Jews, and the Gentiles residents among ‘em, uniting to 
speak in a language that stamps Divinity upon the title used by them 
both. The Jewish passengers upon the road over the top of Calvary, 
stood still near the cross of our Saviour, insultingly to nod at him, to 
reproach him with his assumed appellative of the Son of God, and to 
challenge him to an exertion of that Divinity which both he and they 
affixed to it, by coming down from the cross, and saving himself from 
death. The elders, the scribes, and the chief priests. equally insulted 
him with the same assumption, and equally challenged him to the 
same exertion, calling upon him now to show he was truly re Kine 
oF Isragx, or the Lord and Sovereign of their nation in all ages, by 
putting forth the power of his Divine royalty, and coming down from the 
cross.” (Whitaker’s Origin of Arianism.) 

Such is the testimony of the Jews to the sense in which our Saviour 
applied these titles to himself. ‘The title “Son or Gop” demands, 
however, a larger consideration, various attempts having been made to 
restrain its significance, in direct opposition to this testimony, to the 
mere humanity of our Saviour, and’ to rest its application upon his 
miraculous conception. 

It is true, that this notion is held by some who hesitate not to acknow- 
ledge, that Jesus Christ is a Divine person; but, by denying his Deity 
as “Tie Son or Gop,” they both depart from the faith of the Church 
of Christ in the earliest times, and give up to the Socinians the whole 
argument for the Divinity of Christ which is founded upon that eminent 
appellation. On this account, so frequent and indeed so general a title 
ef our Lord deserves to be more particularly considered, that the foun- 
dation which it lays for the demonstration of the Divinity of Christ may 
not be unthinkingly relinquished; and that a door of error, which has 
been unconsciously opened by the vague reasonings of men, in other 
respects orthodox, may be closed by the authority of Holy Writ. 

That the title, “Son or Gop,” was applied to Christ is a fact. His 
disciples, occasionally before and frequently after his resurrection, give 
him this appellation; he assumes it himself; and it was indignantly 


SECOND | rHEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 529 


denied to him by the Jews, who, by that very denial, ackaowledge that 
it was Claimed in its highest sense by him, and by his disc’ples tor him. 
The question therefore is, what this title imported. 

Those who think that it was assumed by Christ, and given to him by 
his disciples, because of his miraculous conception, are obviously in 
error. Our Lord, when he adopts the appellation, never urges his mira. 
c tlous birth as a proof of his Sonship ; on the contrary, this is a subject 
on which he preserves a total silence, and the Jews were left to consider 
him as “the son of Joseph;” and to argue from his being born at 
“‘ Nazareth,” as they supposed, that he could not be the Messiah: so 
ignorant were they of the circumstances of his birth, and, therefore, of 
the manner of his conception. 

Again, our Lord calls God his Father, and grounds the proof of it 
upon his mzracles. The Jews, too, clearly conceived, that, in making 
this profession of Sonship with reference to God, hé assumed a Divine 
character, and made himself “ equal with God.” They therefore took 
up stones to stone him. In that important argument between our Lord 
and the Jews, in which his great object was to establish the point, that, 
in a peculiar sense, God was his Father, there is no reference at all to 
the miraculous conception. On the contrary, the title «Son of God,” 
is assumed by Christ on a ground totally different; and it is disputed 
by the Jews, not by their questioning or denying the. fact, that he was 
miraculously conceived, but on the assumed impossibility, that he, being 
a man, should be equal to God, which they affirmed that title to import. 

Nor did the disciples themselves give him this title with reference to 
his conception by the Holy Ghost. Certain it is, that Nathanael did 
not know the circumstances of his birth; for he was announced to him 
by Philip as Jesus of Nazareth, “the son of Joseph ;” 
* Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” He did not know, there- 
fore, but that Jesus was the son of Joseph; he knew nothing of his being 
born at Bethlehem, and yet he confesses him to be “ THe Son or Gon, 
and the Kine or Isrart.” 

It may also be observed, that, in the celebrated confession of Peter, 
“Thou art the Christ, the Son of the trvine Gop,” there is no refer- 
ence at all to the miraculous conception; a fact at that time, probably, 
not known even to the apostles, and one of the things which Mary kept 
and pondered in her heart, till the Spirit was given, and the full revela- 
tion of Christ was made to the apostles. But, even if the miraculous 
c@aceftion were known to St. Peter, it is clear, from the answer of our 
Lord to him, that it formed no part of the ground on which he confessed 
‘the Son of Man” to be the “Son or Gop;” for our Lord replies, 
‘Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed 
this unto thee, but my FarHerR which is in heaven.” He had been 


specially tayvht this doctrine of the Sonship of Christ by Goa, an 
Vor. t 34 


and he asks, 


520 THEOLOGICaL INSTITUTES. [PART 


"mnecessary thing, certainly, if the miraculous conception had been the 
unly ground of that Sonship; for the evidence of that fact might have 
been collected from Christ and the Virgin Mother, and there was no 
apparent necessity of a revelation from the Father so particular, a 
teaching so special, as that mentioned in our Lord’s reply, and which ie 
given as an instance of the peculiar “ blessedness” of Simon Barjona. 
This ground, therefore, not being tenable, it has been urged, that 
«Son or Gop” was simply an appellation of Messiah, and was sv used 
among the Jews; in other words, that it is an official designation, and 
not a personal one. Against this, however, the evangelic history affords 
decisive proof. ‘That the Messiah was to be the Jehovah of the Old 
Testament, is plain from the texts adduced in a former chapter, and 
this, therefore, is to be considered the faith of the ancient Jewish Church. 
It is however certain, that, at the period of our Lord’s advent, and for 
many years previously, the learned among the Jews had mingled much 
of the philosophy which they had learned from the heathen schools with 
their theological speculation; and that their writings present often a 
singular compound of crude metaphysical notions, allegories, cabalistie 
mysteries, and, occasionally, great and sublime truths. The age of ow 
Lord was an age of great religious ccrruption and error. The Saddu 
cees were materialists and skeptics; and the Pharisees had long eulti 
vated the opinion, that the Messiah was to be a temporal monarch, a 
notion which served to vitiate their conceptions of his character and 
office, and to darken all the prophecies. ‘Two things, however, amidst 
all this confusion of opinions, and this prevalence of great errors, appear 
exceedingly clear from the evangelists :—1. That the Jews recognized 
the existence of such a being as the “Son of God;” and that, for any 
person to profess to be the Son of God, in this peculiar sense, was to 
cormmit blasphemy. 2. That for a person to profess to be the Messiah 
simply was not considered blasphemy, and did not exasperate the Jews 
to take up stones to stone the offender. Our Lord certainly professed 
to be the Messiah; many of the Jews also, at different times, believed 
m him as such ; and’ yet, as appears from St. John’s Gospel, these 
same Jews, who “believed” on him as Messiah, were not only “ offend- 
ed,” but took up stones to stone him as a blasphemer when he declared 
himself to be the “Son of God,” and that God was his “ proper Father.” 
It follows from these facts, that the Jews of our Lord’s times, generally, 
having been perverted from the faith of their ancestors, did not expect 
the second person of the trinity, “the Son of God,” the Divine Memra, 
or Logos, to be the Messiah. Others, indeed, had a dim and uninflu. 
ential apprehension of this truth; there were who indulged various 
other speculations on the subject , but the true doctrine was only retained 
among the faithful few, as Simeon, who explicitly ascribes Divinity to 
the Messiah. whom he held in his arms; Nathanael, who connects 


SECOND.| THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. O31 


“Son or Gop and Kine or Israrex” together, one the designation of 
the Divine nature, the other of the office of Messiah; and the apostles 
of our Lord, whose minds were gradually opened to this mystery of 
faith, and brought. off from the vulgar notion of the civil character and 
mere human nature and human work of Messiah, by the inspiration 
and teaching of God—« flesh and bluod did not reveai it te them, but 
he Father.” 

We cannot, therefore, account for the use of the title “ Son or Gop,” 
among the Jews of our Lord’s time, whether by his disciples or his 
enemies, by considering it as synonymous with “ Messiah.” The Jews 
regarded the former as necessarily involving a claim to Divinity, but not 
the latter; and the disciples did not conceive that they fully confessed 
their Master, by calling him the Messiah, without adding to it his higher 
_ personal designation. “Thou art the Curist,” says St. Peter; but he 
adds, “ rue Son or THE Livine Gop:” just as Nathanael, under the 
influence of a recent proof of his omniscience, and, consequently, of his 
Divinity, salutes him, first, as “Son or Gop,” and, then, as Messiah, 
“Kine or IsRaey.” 

We are to seek for the origin of the title, “ Tur Son or Gop,” in the 
Scriptures of the Old Testament, where a Divine Son is spoken of, in 
passages, some of which have reference to him as Messiah also, and in 
others which have no such reference. In both, however, we shall find 
that it was a personal designation; a name of revelation, not of office: 
that it was essential in him to be a Son, and accidental only that he was 
the Musstan; that he was the first by nature, the second by appoint- 
ment; and that, in constant association with the name of “ Son,” as 
given to him alone, and in a sense which shuts out all creatures, however 
exalted, are found ideas and circumstances of full and absolute Divinity. 

Under the designation “ Son,” Son of God, he is introduced in the 
second Psalm: “The Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; 
this day have I begotten thee.” From apostolic authority we know, 
that the “ Son,” here introduced as speaking, is Christ ; this application 
to him being explicitly made at least twice in the New Testament. 
Now, if we should allow, with some, that “the day” here spoken of} 
the day of Christ’s resurrection, and should interpret his being “ begot 
ten” of the Father of the act itself of raising him from the dead, it 1s 
clear. that the miraculous conception of Christ is not, in this passage, 
laid down as the ground of his Sonship. The reference is clearly made 
to another transaction, namely, his resurrection. So far this passage, 
thus interpreted, furnishes an instance in which the Messiah is called 
“Tue Son or Gop,” on some ground entirely independent of the mode 
of his incarnation. But he is so frequently called the Son, where there 
is no reference even to his resurrection, that this cannot be considered 
as the ground of that relation; and, indeed, the point is sufficiently 


53Z THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. (PART 


settled by St. Paul, who, in his Epistle to the Romans, tells us, that the 
resurrection of Christ was the declaration of his Sonship, not the ground 
of it—“ DECLARED to be the Son of God with power, by the resurrection 
from the dead.” We perceive, too, from the Psalm, that the mind of 
the inspired writer is filled with ideas of his Divinity, of his claims, and 
of his works as God. This Son the nations of the earth are callec te 
“kiss, lest he be angry, and they perish from the way ;” and every on¢ 
is pronounced blessed who “ putteth his trust in him ;” a declaratior 
of unequivocal Divinity, because found in a book which pronounces 
every man cursed “ who trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm.” 
“It is obvious, at first view, that the high titles and honours ascribed 
in this Psalm to the extraordinary person who is the chief subject of it, 
far transcend any thing that is ascribed in Scripture to any mere crea. 
ture: but if the Psalm be inquired into more narrowly, and compared 
with parallel prophecies ; if it be duly considered, that not only is the 
extraordinary person here spoken of called the Son of God, but that 
title is so ascribed to him as to imply, that it belongs to him in a manner 
that is absolutely singular, and peculiar to himself, seeing he is said to 
be begotten of God, (verse 12,) and is called by way of eminence, the 
Son; (verse 12;) that the danger of provoking him to anger is spoken 
ofin so very different a manner from what the Scripture uses in speak- 
ing of the anger of any mere creature; ‘Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, 
and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little ;’ 
that when the kings and judges of the earth are commanded to serve 
God with fear, they are, at the same time, commanded to kiss the Son, 
which, in those times and places, was frequently an expression of adora- 
tion; and particularly that whereas other scriptures contain awful and 
just threatenings against those who trust in any mere man, the psalmist 
expressly calls them blessed who trust in the Son here spoken of: all 
these things, taken together and compared with the other prophecies, 
make up a character of Divinity; as, on the other hand, when it is said 
that God would set this his Son as his king on his holy hill of Zion, (verse 
6,) these and various other expressions in this Psalm contain characters 
of the subordination which was to be appropriated to that Divine persen 
who was to be incarnate.” (Maclaurin’s Essay on the Prophecies.) 
Neither the miraculous conception of Christ, nor yet his resurrectior 
from the dead, is, therefore, the foundation of his being called the Son 
of God in this Psalm. Not the first, for there is no allusion to it; not 
the second, for he was declared from heaven to be the “ beloved Son” 
of the Father at his very entrance upon his ministry, and, consequently, 
before the resurrection; and also, because the very apostle who applies 
the prediction to the resurrection of Christ, explicitly states, that even 
that was a declaration of an antecedent Sonship. It is also to be noted, 
that, in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, St. Paul insti 


SECOND. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 533 


tutes an argument upon this very passage in the second Pyalm, to prove 
the superiority of Christ to the angels. «For unto which of the angels 
said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee ?” 
“The force of this argument lies in the expression ‘begotten,’ impor. - 
mg that the person addressed is the Son of God, not by creation, but by 
genevation. Christ’s pre-eminence over the angels is here stated ts 
consist in this, that whereas they were created, he is begotten; and the 
apostle’s reasoning is fallacious, unless this expression intimates a 
proper and peculiar filiation.” (7) “He hath obtained,” says Bishop 
Hall, “a more excellent name than the angels, namely, to be called and 
to be the Son of God, not by grace and adoption ; but by nature and 
communication of essence.” This argument from Christ’s superiority 
to all creatures, even the most exalted, shows the sentiment of St. 
Paul as to Divinity being implied in the title Son, given to the Messiah 
in the second Psalm. In this several of the ancient’ Jewish commenta- 
tors agree with him; and here we see one of the sources from which the 
Jews derived their notion of the existence of a Divine Son of God. 

Though the above argument stands independent of the interpretations 
which have been given to the clause “‘ ‘ruts pay have I begotten thee,” 
the following passage from Witsius, in some parts of its argument, has 
great weight :-— 

“But we cannot so easily concede to our adversaries, that, by the 
generation of Christ, mentioned in the second Psalm, his resurrection 
from the dead is intended, and that by this day, we are to understand 
the day on which God, having raised him from the dead, appointed him 
the King.of his Church. For, 1. To beget signifies nowhere in the 
sacred volume to rescue from death; and we are not at liberty to coin 
new significations of words. 2. Though, possibly, it were used in that 
metaphorical acceptation, (which, however, is not yet proved,) it cannot 
be understood in this passage in any other than its proper sense. It is 
here adduced as a reason for which Christ is called the Son of God.— 
Now Christ is the Son of God; not figuratively, but properly ; for the 
Father is called his proper Father, and he himself is denominated the 
proper Son of the Father, by which designation he is distinguished from 
those who are his sons in « metaphorical sense. 3. These we ds are 
spoken to Christ with a certain emphasis, with which they would not 
have been addressed to any of the angels, much less to any of mankind ; 
but if they meam aothing more than the raising of him from the dead, 
they would attribute nothing to Christ which he doth not possess in 
common with many others, who, in like manner, are raised up by the 
power of God, to glory and an everlasting kingdom. 4. Christ raised 


(7) Holden’s Testimonies. ‘Non dicit Deus adoptavi, sed generavi te: quod 
communicationem ejusdem essentie et nature diyine significat, modo tamen 
prorsu ineffabile.” (Wichaelis.) 


53-t _ YHEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES {PART 


himself from the dead, too, by his own power; from which it would 
follow, according to this interpretation, that he begat himself, and that 
he is his own son. 5. It is not true, in fine, that Christ was not 
begotten of the Father, nor called his Son, till that very day on which. 
he was raised from the dead; for, as is abundantly manifest from the 
Gospel history, he often, when ‘yet alive, professed himself thr Son of 
God, and was often acknowledged as such. 6. To-day refers to time 
when human concerns are in question; but this expression, when 
applied to Divine things, must be understood in a sense suitable to the 
majesty of the Godhead. And, if any word may be transferred from 
time, to denote eternity, which is the complete and perfect possession, 
at once, of an interminable life, what can be better adapted to express 
its unsuccessive duration than the term to-day? Nor can our adversa- 
ries derive any support to their cause from the words of Paul, Acts xui, 
32, 33, ‘And we declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise 
which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us, 
their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus, as it is also written in the 
second Psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.’ For, 
1. Paul doth not.here prove the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, 
from this expression in the second Psalm (which, though it describes 
him who is raised again, doth not prove his resurrection,) but from 
Isaiah iv, 3, and Psalm xvi, 10; while he adds, (verses 34 and 35,) 
‘And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead,’ &e. 
2. The words ‘raised up Jesus,’ do not even relate to the resur- 
rection of Jesus from the dead, but to the exhibition of him as a 
Saviour. This raising of him up is expressly distinguished from the 
raising of him again from the dead, which is subsequently spoken of, 
verse 34. The meaning is, that God fulfilled the promise made to the 
fathers, when he exhibited Christ to mankind in the flesh. But what 
was that promise? ‘This appears from the second Psalm, where God 
promises to the Church, that, in due time, he would anoint, as King 
over her, his own Son, begotten of himself To-pay ; that is, from eter- 
nity to eternity, for with God there is a perpetual to-day. Crofius, 
whose name is not offensive to our opposers, has remarked, that Luke 
makes use of the same word to signify exhibiting, in Acts 1, 30; i, 26. 
To these we add another instance from chap. vii, 87: ‘A prophet shall 
the Lord your God raise up unto you.’ 3. Were we to admit, that the 
words of the Psalm are applied to the resurrection of Christ, which 
seemed proper to Calvin, Cameron, and several other Protestant divines, 
the sense will only be this, that, by his being thus raised up again, it 
was declared and demonstrated, that Christ is the Son of the Father, 
begotten of him from everlasting. The Jewish council condermed him 
for blasphemy, because he had called himself the Son of God. ° But, by 
raising him again from the grave, after he had been put to death as a 


5} /OND.} THEOLOGICAL INSTITUILES. 53D 


blasphemer, God acquitted him from that charge, and publicly recog 
nized him as his only-begotten Son. Thus he was declared, exhibited, 
and distinguished as the Son of God with power, expressly and parti. 
tularly, to the entire exclusion of all others. The origina’ word here 
employed by the apostles is remarkably expressive; and, as Ludovicus 
de Dieu has learnedly observed, it signifies that Christ was placed 
between such bounds, and so separated and discriminated from others 
that he neither should nor can be judged to be any one else than the 
Son of God. The expression ‘with power,’ may be joined with 
‘declared ;’ and then the meaning will be that he was shown to be the 
Son of God by a powerful argument. Or it may be connected with 
the ‘Son of God ;’ and then it will intimate that he is the Son of God 
in the most ample and exalted sense of which the term is susceptible ; 
so that this name, when ascribed to him, is ‘a more excellent name’ 
than any that is given to the noblest of creatures.” ( Witsius’s Disser- 
tations on the Creed.) 

Solomon, in Proverbs viii, 22, introduces not the personified, but the 
personal wisdom of God, under the same relation of a Son, and in that 
relation ascribes to him Divine attributes. This was another source 
of the notion which obtained among the ancient Jews, that there was 
a Divine Son of God. 

‘‘ Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his way, 
Before his works of old. 
I was anointed from everlasting, 
From the beginning, before the world was, 
When there were no depths, I was Born,” &c. (8) 

Here, “from considering the excellence of wisdom, the transition 1s 
easy to the undefiled source of it. Abstract wisdom now disappears, 
and the inspired writer proceeds to the delineation of a Divine Being, 
who is portrayed in colours of such splendour and majesty, as can be 
attributed to no other than the eternal Son of God.” (Holden’s Trans. 
lation of Proverbs.) “Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his 
way.” “The Father possessed the Son, had, or. as it were, acquired 
him by an eternal generation. To say of the attribute wisdom, that 
God possessed it in the beginning of his work of creation, is trifling ; 
certainly it is too futile an observation to fall from any sensible writer ; 
how, then, can it be attributed to the wise monarch of Israel ?” Slee 
den’s Translation of Proverbs.) ‘1 was anointed from everlasting.” — 
“ Can it, with propriety, be said of an attribute, that it was Bnowed! 
invested with power and authority from everlasting! In what way, 
literal or figurative, can the expression be predicated of a quality? But 
{ is strictly applicable to the Divine Logos, who was anointed by the 


(8) Holden’s Translation of Proverbs. In the notes to chapter viii, the appli- 
eation of this description of wisdom to Christ is ably and learnedly defended. 


536 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


effusion of the Spirit; who was invested with power and dignity from 
everlasting ; and who, from all eternity, derived his existence and 
essence from the Father ; for in him ‘ dwelleth all the fulness of the God. 
head bodily.’ ” (Holden’s Translation of Proverbs.) 

It is a confirmation of the application of Solomon’s description of 
wisdom to the second person of the Trinity, that the ancient Jewish 
writers, (Philo among the number,) as Allix has shown, (Judgment of the 
Jewish Church,) speak of the generation of Wisdom, and by that term 
mean “the Word,” a personal appellation so familiar to them. Nor is 
there any thing out of the common course of the thinking of the an- 
cient Hebrews in these passages of Solomon, when applied to the per- 
sonal wisdom; since he, as we have seen, must, like them, have been 
well enough acquainted with a distinction of persons in the Trinity, and 
knew Jehovah, their Lawgiver and King, under the title of “the Word 
of the Lord,” as the Maker of all things, and the Revealer of his will, 
in a word, as Divine, and yet distinct from the Father. The relation 
in the Godhead of Father and Son was not, therefore, to the Jews an 
unrevealed mystery, and sufficiently accounts for the ideas of Divinity 
which they, in the days of Christ, connected with the appellation Son 
of Gop. | 

This relation is most unequivocally expressed in the prophecy of 
Micah, chap. vy, 2, “But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be 
little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth 
unto me that is to be ruler in Israel ; whose goings forth have been from 
of old, from everlasting ;” or, as it is in the margin, “ from the days of 
eternity.” (9) Here the person spoken of is said to have had a twofold 
birth, or “going forth.” (1) By a natural birth he came forth from 
Bethlehem to Judah; by another and a higher, he was from the days 
of eternity. One is opposed to the other; but the last is carried into 
eternity itself by words which most clearly intimate an existence prior 
to the birth in Betlilehem, and that an eternal one: while the term used 
and translated his “ goings forth,” conveys precisely the same idea as 
the eternal generation of the Son of God. “The passage carefully 


(9) So the LXX, and the Vulgate, and the critics generally. ‘+ Antiquissima 
erit origine, ab eternis temporibus.” (Dathe.) ‘Imo a diebus eternitatis, i. e 
priusquam natus fuerit, jam ab eterno extitit.” (Rosenmuiler.) 

(1) The word yy to come forth, is used in reference to birth frequently, as 
Gen. xvii, 6; 2 Kings xx, 18; and so the Pharisees understood it, when referring 
to this passage, in answer to Herod’s inquiry, where Christ should be ‘ born.”— 
The plural form, his “ goings forth” from eternity, denotes eminency. To sig 
nify the perfection and excellency of that generation, the word for birth is 
expressed plurally; for it is a common Hebraism to denote the eminency or conti 
nuation of a thing or action by the plural number. God shall judge the world ‘in 
righteousness and equity ;” or most righteously and equitably Psalm xeviii, %- , 
‘The angers of the Lord,” Lam. iv, 16, &c. 


SECOND. ] _ THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 537 


distinguishes his human nature from his eternal generation ‘The 
_rophet describes him who was to ‘come out of Bethlehem’ by another 
more eminent coming or going forth, even from all eternity. This is 
so signal a description of the Divine generation, before all time, or 
of that going forth from everlasting of Christ, the eternal Son of God ; 
‘God, of the substance of the Father, begotten, before the worlds ;’? who 
was afterward in time made man, and born into the world in Bethlehem, 
{hat the prophecy evidently belongs to him, and could never be verified 
of any other.” (Dr. Pocock.) 

This text, indeed, so decidedly indicates that peculiar notion of the 
Divinity of our Lord, which is marked by the term and the relation of 
Son, that it is not surprising that Socinians should resort to the utmost 
violence of criticism to escape its powerful evidence. Dr. Priestley, 
therefore, says, “that it may be understood concerning the promises of 
God, in which the coming of Christ was signified to mankind from the 
beginning of the world.” But nothing can be more forced or unsup- 
ported. The word here employed never signifies the work of God in 
predicting future events: but is often used to express natural birth and 
origin. So it is unquestionably used in the preceding clause, and cannot 
be supposed to be taken in a different sense, much less in a unique 
sense, in that which follows, and especially when a clear antiihesis is 
marked and intended. He was to be born in time; but was not, on 
that account, merely a man: he was “from the days of eternity.” By 
his natural birch, or “ going forth,” he was from Bethlehem ; but his 
“ goings forth,” his production, his heavenly birth or generation, was 
from everlasting ; for so the Hebrew word means, though, like our own 
word “ ever,” it is sometimes accommodated to temporal duration. — Its 
proper sense is that of eternity, and it is used in passages which speak 
of the infinite duration of God himself. 

Others refer “his goings forth from everlasting,” to the purpose of 
God that he should come into the world; but this is too absurd to need 
refutation ; no such strange form of speech as this would be, if taken in 
this sense, occurs in the Scriptures: and it would be mere trifling so 
solemnly to affirm that of Messiah, which is just as true of any other 
person born into the world. This passage must, then, stand as an irre- 
futable roof of the faith of the ancient Jewish Church, both in the 
Divinity and the Divine Sonship of Messiah; and, as Dr. Hales well 
ohserves, (Hales’s Analysis,) “'This prophecy of Micah is, perhaps, 
the most important single prophecy in the Old ‘Testament, and the most 
comprehensive respecting the personal characier of the Messiah, and 
his successive manifestation to the world. It crowns the whole chain 
of prophecies descriptive of the several limitations of the blessed Seed 
of the woman, to the line of Shem, to the family of Abraham, Isaac, 
and Jacob, to the tribe of Judah, and to the royal house of David. here 


538 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, {PART 


terminating in his birth at Bethlehem, ‘the city .f David.’ It carefully 
distinguishes his human nativity from his eternal generation ; foretelis 
the rejection of the Israelites and Jews for a season, their final restora. 
tion, and the universal peace destined to prevail throughout the earth ip 
‘the regeneration.’ It forms, therefore, the basis of the New Testa 
ment, which begins with his human birth at Bethlehem, the miraculous 
circumstances of which are recorded in the introductions of Matthew’s 
and Luke’s Gospels; his eternal generation, as the Oracte, or Wis- 
pom, in the sublime introduction of John’s Gospel; his prophetic 
character and second coming illustrated in the tour Gospels and the 
Epistles ; ending with a prediction of the speedy approach of the latter, 
in the Apocalypse, Rev. xxu, 20.” 

The same relation of Son, in the full view of supreme Divinity, and 
where no reference appears to be had to the office and future work of 
Messiah, is found in Proverbs xxx, 4, ‘Who hath ascended up into hea- 
ven, or descended? Who hath gathered the wind in his fists? Who 
hath bound the waters in a garment? Who hath established all the ends 
of the earth? What is his name, and what is his Son’s name, if thou 
canst tell?” Here the Deity is contemplated, not in his redeeming acts, 

in any respect or degree; not as providing for the recovery of a lost 
race, or that of the Jewish people, by the gift of his Son: he is placed 
before the reverend gaze of the prophet in his acts of creative and con- 
serving power only, managing at will and ruling the operations of 
nature ; and yet, even in these peculiar offices of Divinity alone, he is 
spoken of as having a Son, whose “name,” that is, according to the 
Hebrew idiom, whose nature, is as deep, mysterious, and unutterable as 
his own. “ What is His name, and what is his Son’s name, canst thou 
tell ?” (2) 

The Scriptures of the Old Testament themselves in this manner fur- 
nished the Jews with the idea of a personal Son in the Divine nature ; 
and their familiarity with it is abundantly evident; from the frequent 
application of the terms “Son,” “Son of God,” “ first and only-begotten 
Soa,” “ Offspring of God,” to the Logos, by Puixo; and that in pas- 


(2) Dr. A. Clarke, in his note on this text, evidently feels the difficulty of 
disposing of it on the theory that the term Son is not a Divine title, and enters 
a sort of caveat against resorting to doubtful texts, as proofs of our Lord’s Divi. 
nity. But for all purposes for which this text has ever been adduced, it is nut a 
doubtful one; for it expresses, as clearly as possible, that God has a Son, and 
makes no reference to the incarnation at all; so that the words are not spoken 
in anticipation of that event. Those who deny the Divine Sonship can never, 
therefore, explain that text. What follows in the note referred to is more objec- 
tionable: it hints at the obscurity of the writer as weakening his authority. Who 
he was, or what he was, we indeed know not; but his words stand in the book 
of Proverbs; a book, the inspiration of which beth our Lord and his apostles have 
verified, and that is enough: we need no other attestation. . 


SECOND. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, , 539 


sages where he must, in all fair interpretation, be understood as speaking 
Xt a personal, and not of a personified Locos. The same terms are aiso 
found in other Jewish writers before the Christian era 

The phrase “Son of God” was, therefore, known to the ancient Jews, 
and to them conveyed a very definite idea; and it is no answer to this 
to say, that it was a common appellative of Messiah among thei 
ancient writers. The question is, how came “Son of God” to be ar. 
appellative of Messiah? “ Musstan” is an official title ; “Son,” a per. 
sonal one. It is granted that the Messiak is the Son of God; but it is 
denied that, therefore, the term Son of God ceases to be a personal 
description, and that it imports the same with Messiah. David was the 
“son of Jesse,” and the “king of Israel ;” he, therefore, who was king 
of Israel was the son of Jesse; but the latter is the personal, the former 
only the oficial description; and it cannot be argued that “son of 
Jesse” conveys no idea distinct from “king of Israel.” On the con- 
trary, it marks his origin and his family; for, before he was king of 
Israel, he was the son of Jesse. In like manner, “Son of God’ marks 
the natural relation of Messiah to God; and the term Messiah his 
oficial relation to men. The personal title cannot otherwise be ex- 
plained ; and as we have seen, that it was used by the Jews as one of the 
titles of Messiah, yet still used personally, and not officially, and, also, 
without any reference to the miraculous conception at all, as before 
proved, it follows, that it expresses a natural relation to God, subsisting 
not in the human, but in the higher nature of Messiah ; and, this higher 
nature being proved to be Divine, it follows, that the term Son of God, 
as applied to Jesus, is, therefore, a title of absolute Divinity, importing 
his participation in the very nature and essence of God. The same 
ideas of Divine Sonship are suggested by almost every passage in 
which the phrase occurs in the New Testament. 

“When Jesus was baptized, he went up straightway out of the water, 
and lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God 
descending like a dove, and lighting upon him; and lo, a voice from 
heaven, This is my BELovED Son, in whom | am weil pieased.” The 
circumstances of this testimony are of the most solemn and impressive 
kind, and there can be no rational doubt but they were designed autho. 
ritatively to invest our Lord with the title “Son of Grod” in the full 
sense which it bears in those prophecies in which the Messias had been 
mtroduced under that appellation, rendered still more strong and em- 
phatic by adding the epithet “beloved,” and the declaration, that in him 
the “Father was well pleased.” That the name “Son of God” is not 
here given to Christ with reference to his resurrection, need not be 
stated; that it was not given to him, along with a declaration of the 
Father’s pleasure in him, because of the manner in which he had ful. 
filled the oflice of Messiah, is also cbvious, for he was bnt just then 


510 THEOLOGICaL INSTITUTES, [PART 


entering upon his office and cc -amencing his ministry; and if, therefore, 
it can be proved, that it was not given to him with reference to his 
miraculous conception, it must follow that it was given on grounds inde- 
pendent of his office, and independent of the circumstances of his birth: 
and that, therefore, he was in a higher nature than his human, and for 
a higher reason than an official one, the “Son of God.” 

Now th:s is, I think, very easily and conclusively proved. As sooy 
as tne Baptist John had heard this testimony, and seen this descent of 
the Holy Spirit upon him, he tells us that he “bore record that this is 
the Son or Gop :”’—the Messiah, we grant, but not the Son of God, 
because he was the Messiah, but Son of God and Messiah also ‘This 
is clear, from the opinion of the Jews of that day, as before shown. 
It was to the Jews that he “bore record” that Jesus was the Son of 
God. But he used this title in the sense commonly received by his 
hearers Had he simply testified that he was the Messiah, this would 
not to them in general have expressed the idea which ALL attached to 
the name “Son of God,” and which they took to invole a Divine cha- 
racter and claim. But in this ordinary sense of the title among the 
Jews, John the Baptist gave his testimony to him, and by that shews in 
what sense he himself understood the testimony of God to the Sonship 
of Jesus. So, in his closing testimony to Christ, recorded in John ii, 
he makes an evident allusion to what took place at the baptism of our 
Lord, and says, ‘The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things 
into his hand.” Here the love of the Father, as declared at his bap- 
tism, is represented as love to him as the Son, and all things being given 
into his hands, as the consequence of his being his beloved Son. “ All 
things,” unquestionably, imply all offices, all power and authority; all 
that is included in the offices of King, Messias, Mediator; and it 
is affirmed, not that he is Son, and beloved as a Son because of his 
being invested with these offices, but that he is invested with them, 
because he was the well-beloved Son; a circumstance which fully 
demonstrates that “Son of God” is not an official title, and that it is 
not of the same import as Messiah. To the transaction at his baptism 
our Lord himself adverts in John v, 37: “And the Faruer HIMSELF, 
which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me.” For, as he had just 
mentioned the witness arising from his miraculous works, and, in addi. 
tior to these, introduces the witness of the Father himself as «listinet 
from the works, a personal testimony from the Father alone ean be 
imtei.ded, and that personal testimony was given at his baptism. Now, 
the witness of the Father, on this occasion, is, that he was his beloved 
Son; and it is remarkable that our Lord introduces the Father’s testi- 
mony to his Sonship on an occasion in which the matter in dispute with 
the Jews was respecting his claim to be the Son of God. The Jews 
denied that God was his Fether in tie sense in which he had declared hi 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 54] 


to be so, and “they sought the more to kill him, because he not only 
had broken the Sabbath; but said also that God was his Father, 
making himself equal with God.” In this case, what was the conduct 
of our Lord? He re-affirms his Sonship even in this very objectionable 
‘sense; asserts that “ the Son doeth all things soever thzt the Father 
docth,” verse 19; that “as the Father raiseth the dead, so the Son 
quickeneth whomsoever he will,” verse 21; that “all judgment has 
been committed to the Son, that all men should honour the Son, even 
as they honour the Father,” verse 23 ; that “as the Father hath life in 
himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself,” verse 26 ; 
and then confirms all these high claims of equality with the Father, by 
adducing the Father’s own witness at his baptism: “ And the Father 
himself hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at 
any time, nor seen his shape ; and ye have not his word abiding in you, 
for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not.” (3) With respect to this 
testimony, two critical remarks have been made, which, though not 
essential to the argument, farther corroborate the views just taken. The 
one is, that in all the three evangelists who record the testimony of the 
Father to Christ at his baptism, the article is prefixed both to the substan- 
tive and the adjective. Matt. iii, 17, Ovro¢g eorw 6 biog pe 6 ayatyros, 
the most discriminating mode of expression that could be employed, as 
if to separate Jesus from every other who, at any time, had received the 
appellation of the Son of God: This is that Son of mine who is the 
beloved. In the second clause, “in whom I am well pleased,” the verb 
in all the three evangelists is in the first aorist, ev  evdornoa. Now, 
although we often render the Greek aorist by the English present, yet 
this can be done with propriety only when the proposition is equally 
true, whether it be stated in the present, in the past, or in the future 
time. And thus the analogy of the Greek language requires us not 
only to consider the name Son of God, as applied in a peculiar sense tu 


(3) Though the argument does not at all depend upon it, yet it may be proper 
to refer to Campbell’s translation of these verses, as placing some of the clauses 
in this passage in a clearer light. ‘* Now the Father, who sent me, hath him- 
self attested me. Did ye never hear his voice, or see his form? Or, have ye for- 
gotten his declaration, that ‘ ye believe not him whom he hath commissioned ?’” 
On this translation, Dr. Campbell remarks, ‘* The reader will observe, that the 
two clauses, which are rendered in the English Bible as declarations, are, in this 
version, translated as questions. The difference in the original is only in the 
peinting That they ought to be so read, we need not, in my opinion, stronge 
evidence than that they throw much light upon the whole passage. Our Lord 
here refers to the testimony given at his baptism; and when you read the two 
clauses as questions, all the chief circumstances attending that memorable testi- 
mony are exactly pointed out. ‘Have ye never heard his voice, gwyn ex rwy 
spavwy 3 nor seen his form?’ the owparixoy cidos, in which, St. Luke says, the Holy 
Ghost descended. ‘ And have ye not his declaration abiding in you‘%* rov doyov, 
the words which were spoken at that time.” 


542 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 4 [PART 


Jesus, but also to refer the expression used at his baptism to that inter- 
course which had subsisted between the Father and the Son, before this 
name was announced to men. (4) 

The epithet “ onLY BEGOTTEN,” which several times occurs in the New 
Testament, affords farther proof of the Sonship of Christ in his Divine 
nature. One of these instances only need be selected. “'The Word 
was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory 
as of the onLY BEGOTTEN of the Father, full of grace and truth.” If the 
epithet only begotten referred to Christ’s miraculous conception, then 
the glory “as of the only begotten” must be a glory of the human na 
ture of Christ only, for that alone was capable of being thus conceived. 
This is, however, clearly contrary to the scope of the passage, which 
does not speak of the glory of the nature, “the flesh,” which “THE 
Worp” assumed, but of the glory of the Word HIMsELF, who ts here 
said to be the only begotten of the Fatner. It is, therefore, the glory 
of his Divine nature which is here intended. (5) Such, too, was the 
sense in which the primitive Church and the immediate followers of the 
apostles understood the title povoyevnc, only begotten, or only Son, as 
Bishop Bull has shown at length, (Judicium Eccles.) and “ to him and 
others,” says Dr. Waterland, “I may refer for proof that the title, Son 
of God, or only-begotten Son in Scripture, cannot be reasonably under- 
stood either of our Lord’s miraculous conception by the Holy Ghost, or of 
his Messiahship, or of his being the first begotten from the dead, or of his 
receiving all power, and his being appointed heir ef all things. None of 
these circumstances, singly considered, nor all together, will be sufficient 
to account for the title only Son, or only begotten; but it is necessary 
to look higher up to the pre-existent and Divine nature of the Word, who 
was in the beginning with God, and was himself very God, before the 
creation, and from all eternity. Angels and men have been called sons 
of God, in an improper and metaphorical sense, but they have never 
been styled ‘ only begotten,’ nor indeed, ‘ sons,’ in any such distinguish. 
ing and emphatic manner as Christ is. They are sons by adoption, or 
faint resemblance; he is truly, properly, and eminently, Son of God. 
and, therefore, God, as every son of man is, therefore, truly man.” The 
note in the Socinian version tells us, “ that this expression does not refer 


(4) ‘**Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, that is, have 
always been well pleased, am at present well pleased, and will continue to be well 
pleased.” ‘(Macknight.) 

(5) “The glory as of the only begotten,” &c. ‘The particle ws, as, is not 
nere a note of similitude, but of confirmation, that this Son was the only begot 
ten of the Father.” (Whithy.) ‘* This particle sometimes answers to the Hebrew 
ach, and signifies certe, truly.” (Ibid.) So Schleusner, in voc. 15, revera, vere 
The clause may, therefore, be properly rendered, ‘‘ The glory indeed, or truly of 
the only begotten of the Father.” 


SECOND. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 51R 


to any peculiar mode of derivation or existence; but is used to express 
nerely a higher degree of affection, and is applied to Isaac, though Abra. 
Sam had other sons.” Isaac is, however, so called, because he was 
the only child which Abraham had by his wife Sarah, and this instance 
(s, therefore, against them. The other passages in this Gospel anJ in 
St. John’s First Epistle, in which the term is used, give no countenance 
to this interpretation, and in the only other passages in the New Testa 
ment, in which it occurs, it unquestionably means an “only son or 
child.” Luke vii, 12, “ Behold there was a dead man carried out, the 
only son of his mother.” Luke viii, 42, “ For he had one only daugh- 
ter.” Luke ix, 38, “ Master, look upon my son, for he is my only child.” 
Here, then, on the one hand, there is no passage in which the epithet 
only begotten occurs, which indicates by any other phrase or circum. 
stance, that it has the force of well beloved ; while there are several, 
which, from the circumstances, oblige us to interpret it literally as ex- 
pressive of a peculiar relationship of the child to the parent, an only, an 
only-begotten child. This is, then, the sense in which it is used of 
Christ, and it must respect either his Divine or human nature. Those 
who refer it to his human nature, consider it as founded upon his miracu- 
lous conception. It is, however, clear, that that could not constitute 
him a son, except as it consisted in the immediate formation of the man. 
nood of our Lord by the power of God; but, in this respect, he was not 
the “only begotten,” not the “ only Son,” because Adam was thus also 
immediately produced, and for this very reason is called by St. Luke, 
“the son of God.” Seeing, then, that povoyevne, only begotten, does not 
any where import the affection of a parent, but the peculiar relation of 
an only son; and that this peculiarity does not apply to the production 
uf the mere human nature of our Lord, the first man being in this sense, 
and for this very reason, “a son of God,” thereby excluding Christ, 
considered as a man, from the relation of onty Son, the epithet can 
only be applied to the Divine nature of our Lord, in which alone, he 
is at once naturally and exclusively “the Son oF THE LIvinG Gop.” 
All those passages, too, which declare that “all things were made by 
the Son,” and that God “sent his Son,” into the world may be considered 
as declarations of a Divine Sonship, because they imply that the Crr- 
ATOR was, at the very period of creation, a Son, and that he was the 
Son or Gop, when and consequently before, he was sent into the world ; 
and thus both will prove, that that relation is independent either of his 
official appointment as Messiah, or of his incarnation. The only plau- 
sible objection to this is, that when a person is designated by a particu- 
ar title, he is often said to perform actions under that title, though the 
designation may have been given to him subsequently. Certain acts 
may be said to have been done by the king, though, in fact, he per- 
formed them before his advancement to the throne; and we ascribe the 


O44 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. {PART 


“Principia” to Sir Isaac Newton, though that work was written before 
he received the honour of knighthood. In this manner we are told, by 
those who allow the Divinity, of Christ, while they deny his Divine Son- 
ship, that, as Son of God was one of the common appellations of Christ 
among his disciples, it was natural for them to ascribe creation, and 
other Divine acts performed before the incarnation, to the Son, meainwg 
morely that they were done by that same Divine person who in Conse. 
quence of his incarnation and miraculous conception, became the Son 
of God, and was by his disciples acknowledged as such. 

The whole of this argument supposes that the titles “rae Son,” “THE 
Son or Gop,” are merely human titles, and that they are applied to 
Christ, when considered as God, and in his pre-existent state, only in 
consequence of that interchange of appellations to which the circum. 
stance of the union of two natures, Divine and human, in one person, so 
naturally leads. Thus it is said, that the “« Lord of glory” was “ cruci- 
fied ;” that Gop purchased the Church “ with his own blood ;” that “THE 
Son oF MAN” was “in heaven” before the ascension. So also in fami- 
liar style, we speak of the Divinity of Jesus, and of the Godhead of the 
Son or Mary. An interchange of appellations is acknowledged ; but 
then even this supposes that some of them are designations of his Di- 
vine, while others describe his assumed nature ; and the simple circum. 
stance of such an interchange will no more prove the title Son or Gop 
to be a human designation, than it will prove Son or Mary to be a Di- 
vine one. Farther, if such an interchange of titles be thus contended 
for, we may then ask, which of the titles, in strict appropriation, desig- 
nate the human, and which the Divine nature of our Lord? If “ Son 
of God” be, in strictness, a human designation, and so it must be, if it 
relate not to his Divinity, then we may say that our Saviour, as God, 
has no distinctive name at ali in the whole Scriptures. The title “‘ Gop” 
does not distinguish him from the other persons of the trinity, and Worp 
stands in precisely the same predicament as Son ; for the same kind of 
criticism may reduce it to merely an official appellative, given because 
of his being the medium of instructing men in the will of God; and it 
may, with equal force, be said that he is called “the Word” in his pre- 
existent state only, because he in time, became the Word, in like man. 
ner as. in time also he became the Son. The other names of Chris 
ar? all oficzal ; and as in the Scriptures we have no such phrase a3 
“the second person in the trinity” and other theological designations, 
since adopted, to express the Divinity of Christ, the denial of the title 
Son as a designation of Divinity leads to this remarkable conclusion, 
{remarkable especially, when considered as coming from those who hold 
the Deity of Christ,) that we have not in Scripture, neither in the Olt 
nor the New J'estament, a single appellation which, in strictness and 
utith of speech, can be used to express the Divine person of him whe 


£RCOND. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 545 


was made flesh and dwelt among us. If, then, an interchange of Divine 
uid human designations be allowed, the title “Son or Gop” muy still be 
a Divine description for any thing which such an interchange implies ; 
if it is not a designation of his Divinity, we are left without a name for our 
Saviour as God, and considered as existing before the incarnation, and 
so there can properly be no interchange of Divine and human titles at all. 

But the notion that the title Son of God is an appellation of the human 
nature of our Lord, applied sometimes to him, when his Divine charac- 
_ ter and acts are distinctly considered, by a customary interchange of 
designations, is a mere assumption. ‘There is nothing to prove it, while 
all those passages which connect the title “Son,” immediately, and by 
way of eminence, with his Divinity remain wholly unaccounted for on 
this theory, and are, therefore, contrary to it. Leta few of these be 
examined. It is evident that, in a peculiar sense, he claims God as his 
Father, and that with no reference either to the incarnation or resurrection, 
or to any thing beside a relation in the Divine nature. So, when he had 
said to the Jews, ‘“‘ My Father worketh hitherto and I work ;” the Jews 
so understood him to claim God for his Father as to equal himself with 
God—* they sought the more to kill him, because he had not only bro- 
ken the Sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, carga sdsov, HIS 
OWN PROPER FatueR, making himself equa with God;” and, so far 
from correcting this as an error in his hearers, which he was bound to 
do by every moral consideration, if they had so greatly mistaken him, 
he goes on to confirm them in their opinion as to the extent of his claims, 
declaring, that ‘“‘ what things soever the Father doeth, these also doth 
the Son likewise; and that as the Father hath life in himself, so hath 
he given the Son to have life in himself.” In all this it is admitted by 
our Lord, that whatever he is and has is from the Father ; which is, 
indeed, implied in the very name and relation of Son; but if this com- 
munication be not of so peculiar a kind as to imply an equality with God, 
a sameness of nature and perfections, there is not only an unwarrantable 
presumption in the words of our Lord, but, in the circumstances in which 
they were uttered, there is an equivocation in them inconsistent with 
the sincerity of an honest man. This argument is confirmed by attend- 
ing to a similar passage in the tenth chapter of John. Our Lord says, 
“They shall never perish ; my Father which gave them me is greater 
than I, and none is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. I and 
my Father art onr. Then the Jews took up stones to stone him.” 
And they assign, for so doing, the very same reason which St. John has 
mentioned in the fifth chapter: “ We stone thee for blasphemy, because 
that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.” Our Lord’s answer is: 
‘« Ts it not written in your law, I said ye are gods? If he called them 
gods unto whom the word of God came, and the Scriptures cannot be 


sroken,” 2. e. if the language of Scripture be unexceptionable, “say 
Vo. I. 35 


d46 SHEOLOGIC, I, INSLITUTES. [PART 


ye of him whom the Father hath sancufied and sent into the world, 
thou blasphemest, because I said, Iam the Son of God?” These words 
are sometimes quoted in support of the opinion of those who hold that 
our Saviour is called the Son of God, purely upon account of the com- 
mission which he received. But the force of the argument and the 
consistency of the discourse require us to affix a much higher meaning 
to that expression. Our Lord is reasoning a fortiori. He vindicates 
himself from the charge of blasphemy in calling himself the Son of God, 
because even those who hold civil offices upon earth are called, in Serip- 
ture, gods. 6) But that he might not appear to put himself upon a level 
with them, and to retract his former assertion, ‘I and my Father are 
one,’ he not only calls himself ‘him whom the Father hath sent into 
the world,’ which implies that he had a being, and that God was his 
Father, before he was sent; but he subjoins, ‘If I do not the works of 
my Father, believe me not. But if [ do, though you believe not me, 
believe the works, that ye may know and believe that the Father is in 
me, and I in him, expressions which appear to be equivalent to his 
former assertion, ‘I and the Father are one,’ and which were certainly 
understood by the Jews in that sense, for as soon as he uttered them 
they sought again to take him.” (Hill’s Lectures.) 

To these two eminent instances, in which our Lord claims God as 
his Father, in reference solely to his Divine nature, and to no circum. 
stance whatever connected with his birth or his offices, may be added 
his unequivocal answer, on his trial, to the direct question of the Jewish 
council.—* Then said they all, Art thou the Son of God? and he saith 
unto them, Ye say that [ am,” that is, J am that ye say ; thus declaring 
that, in the very sense in which they put the question, he was the Son 
of God. In confessing himself to be, in that sense, the Son of Ged, 
he did more than claim to be the Messiah, for the council judged 
him for that reason guilty of “blasphemy ;” a charge which could not 
lie against any one, by the Jewish law, for professing to be the Messiah. 
It was in their judgment a case of blasphemy, explicitly provided against 
by their “law,” which inflicted death upon the offence; but, in the whole 
Mosaic institute, it is not a capital crime to assume the title and charac. 
ter of Messiah. Why, then, did the confession of Christ, that he wag 
the “Son of God,” in answer to the interrogatory of the council, lead 
them to exclaim, “ What need we any farther witness? for we ourselves 
have heard of his own mouth—he is worthy of death.” “We havea 


(6) «This argument, which is from the less to the greater, proceeds thus: If 
those who having nothing Divine in them, namely, the judges ot the great sanhe 
drim, to whom the psalmist there speaks, are called gods ror this reason only, 
that they have in them a certain imperfect image of Divine power and authority, 
how much more may I be called God, the Son of God, who am the natnral Sor 
of Ged’ (Bishop Bull.) 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 547 


law, and by our law he ought to die.” The reason is given, “ because 
he made himself tur Son or Gov.” His “blasphemy” was alleged to 
fie in this; this, therefore, implied an invasion of the rights and honours 
of the Divine nature, and was, in their view, an assumption of positive 
Divinity. Our Lord, by his conduct, shows that they did not mistake 
his intention. He allows them to proceed against him without lowering 
his pretensions, or correcting their mistake ; which, had they really 
fallen into one, as to the import of the title “Son of God,” he must 
have done, or been accessary to his own condemnation. (7) 

As in none of these passages the title Son of God can possibly be 
considered as a designation of his human nature or office; so, in the 
apostolic writings, we find proof of equal force that it is used even by 
way of opposition and contradistinction to the human and inferior nature. 
Romans i, 3, 4, “ Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was 
made of the seed of David according to the flesh ; and declared to be 
the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the 
resurrection from the dead.” A very few remarks will be sufficient to 
point out the force of this passage. The apostle, it is to be observed, 
is not speaking of what Christ is officially, but of what he is personally 
and essentially, for the truth of all his official claims depends upon the 
truth of his persona! ones: if he be a Divine person, he is every thing 
else he assumes to be. He is, therefore, considered by the apostle dis- 
tinctly in his two natures. As a man he was “flesh,” “of the seed of 
David,” and a son of David; in a superior nature he was Divine, and 
the Son of God. To prove that he was of the seed of David, no evi- 
dence was necessary but the Jewish genealogies : to prove him Divine, 
or, as the apostle chooses to express it, “THE Son or Gop,” evidence 
of a higher kind was necessary, and it was given in his “ resurrection 
from the dead.” That “declared him to be the Son of God with power,” 
or powerfully determined and marked him out to be the Son of God, a 
Divine person. That an opposition is expressed between what Christ 
was according to the flesh, and what he was according to a higher na- 
ture, must be allowed, or there is no force in the apostle’s observation ; 
and equally clear it must be, that the nature, put in opposition to the 
fleshly nature, can be no other than the Divine nature of Christ, the 
apostolic designation of which is the “Son or Gop.” 

This opposition between the two natures is sufficiently marked for the 
purpose of the argument, without taking into account the import of the 
phrase in the passage just quoted, “according to the Spirit of holiness,” 
which, by many critics, is considered as equivalent to “according to his 
Divine nature.” 

(7) See this argument largely and ably stated in Wilson’s * Tlustration of the 


Method of explaining the New Testament, by the early opinions of Jews and 
Christians concerning Christ.” 


548 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


Because of the opposition, stated by the apostle, between what Christ 
was, xara, according to, in respect of the flesh; and his being declared 
the Son of God with power, xara, according to, in respect of ‘the Spirit 
of holiness ;” Macknight, following many others, interprets the “ Spirit 
of holiness” to mean the Divine nature of Christ, as “the flesh” signifies 
his whole human nature. ‘To this Schleusner adds his authority, sup 
voce ayiwduvy. ‘ Summa Dei majestas et perfectio, Rom. i, 4, xarc. 
mveuuca ayimduvys. Quoad vim suam et majestatem divinam. Similiter 
in vers. Alex. non solum, Heb. 117, Psa. exlv, 4, 5, sed etiam rw wap 
respondet, Psa. xcvii, 12.” 

Doddridge demurs to this, on the ground of its being unusual in Scrip- 
ture to call the Divine nature of Christ “the Spirit of holiness,” or the 
“ Holy Spirit.” This is, however, far from a conclusive objection : it is 
not so clear that there are not several instances of this in Scripture ; 
arid certain it is, that the most ancient fathers frequently use the terms 
“ Spirit,” and “ Spirit of God,” to express the Divine nature of our Lord. 
“ Certissimum est,” says Bishop Bull, “ Filium Dei, secundum Deitatis 
hypostasin in scriptis Patrum titulo Spiritus, et Spiritus Dei et Spiritus 
Sancti passim insigniri.” To this we may add the authority of many 
other eminent critics. (8) 

The whole argument of the Apostle Paul, in the first chapter of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews, is designed to prove our Lord superior to angels, 


(8) ‘*We have observed so often before, that the Sririt in Christ, especially 
when opposed to the flesh, denotes his Divine nature, that it is needless to repeat 
it. Nor ought it to seem strange, that Christ, as the Son of God, and God, is 
here called the Spirit of holiness, an appellation generally given to the third 
person of the Divinity, for the same Divine and spiritual nature is common to 
every person of the trinity. Hence we have observed, that Hersmas, a cotempo- 
rary of St. Paul, has expressly called the Divine person of the Son of God, a 
Holy Spirit.” (Bull.) ‘‘When the term Spirit reters to Christ, and is put in 
opposition to the flesh, it denotes his Divine nature.” (Schettgen.) The same 
view is taken of the passage by Beza, Erasmus, Cameron, Hammond, Poole, and 
Macknight. The note of Dr. Guyse contains a powerful reason for this inter. — 
pretation. ‘If ‘the Spirit of holiness’ is here considered as expressive of the 
sense in which Christ is ‘the Son of God,’ it evidently signifies his Divine nature, 
in opposition to what he was according to the flesh; and so the antithesis is very 
beautiful between cara rvevpa, according to the Spirit, and xara capxa, according to 
the flesh. But if we consider it as the principle of the power by which Christ was 
raised from the dead, for demonstrating him to be the Son of God, it may signify 
either his own Divine nature or the Holy Spirit, the third person in the adorable 
trinity; and yet, unless his own Divine nature concurred in raising him from the 
dead, his resurrection, abstractedly considered in itself, no more proved him to be 
the Son of God, than the resurrection of believers, by the power of God, and by 
‘his Spirit who dwelleth in them,’ Rom. viii, 11, prove any of them to be so.” 
It is also in corroboration of this view that Christ represents himself as the agent 
of his own resurrection.. ‘‘ I lay down my life, and I Have power to take it 
again.” ‘‘ Destroy this temple, and in three days I wiLt ralse 1T uP” 


SECOND.) THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 549 


and lie adduces, as conclusive evidence on this point, that to none of the 
angels was it ever said, “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten 
thee. And again, I will be to him a Farner, and he shall be to me a 
‘Son.” It is, therefore, clear, that on this very ground of Sonship, our 
Lord is argued to be superior to angels, that is, superior in nature, and 
in nalural relation to God; for in no other way is the argument con- 
clusive. He has his title Son, by rvueRrrance, that is, by natural and 
HEREDITARY right. It is by “znheritance” that he hath obtained a 
“more excellent name” than angels ; that is, by his being or the Father, 
and, therefore, by virtue of his Divine filiation. Angels may be, in an 
inferior sense, the sons of God by creation ; but they cannot inherit that 
title, for this plain reason, that they are created not begotten; while our 
Lord inherits the “ more excellent name” because he is “ begotten,” not 
created. For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art 
my Son, this day have I secorren thee?” (9) The same ideas of 
absolute Divinity, connect themselves with the title throughout this 
chapter. “’Tlur Son,” by whom “ God in these latter days hath spoken 
to us,” is “the brightness, the effulgence of his glory, and the express, 
or exact and perfect image of his person.” But it is only to the Divine 
nature of our Lord that these expressions can refer. ‘The brightness 
of’ his glory” is a phrase in which allusion is made to a luminous body 
which is made visible by its own effulgence. The Father is compared 
to the original fountain of light, and the Son to the effulgence or body 
of rays streaming from it. ‘Thus we are taught, that the essence of 
both is the same; that the one is inseparable from, and not to be con. 
ceived of without the other; consequently, that neither of them ever 
was or could be alone. ‘The Son is declared to be of the same nature 
and eternity with the rather; ‘‘ And from hence, more particularly, the 
Church seems to have taken the occasion of confessing in opposition to 
the Arian heresy, as we find it done in one of our creeds, that ‘ Jesus 
Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, was begotten of the Father be- 
- fore all worlds, that he is God of God, Light of Light, very God of 
very God, of one substance with the Father, by whom all things are 
made.’” (Stanhope.) Certainly, this brightness, or effulgence from the 
Father is expressly spoken of the Son; but it cannot be affirmed of 


(9) It may be granted, that xdxpovonew is not always used to express the obtain. 
ing of a thing by strict hereditary right; but also to acquire it by other means, 
though still the idea of right is preserved. The argument of the apostle, how- 
ver, compels us to take the word in its primary and proper sense, which is well 
expressed in our translation to obtain by inheritance. ‘*'The apostle’s argument, 
taken from the name Son of God, is this—he hath that name by inheritance, or 
on account of his descent from God; and Jesus, by calling himself the only 
begotten of the Father, hath excluded from that honourable relation angels and 
every other beings whatever.” (Macknight.) 


$50 ‘HEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


him with reference to his humanity; and if it must necessarily be 
understood of his superior, his Divine nature, it necessarily implies the 
idea which is suggested by Sonship. For if the second person of the 
trinity were co-ordinate and independent, in no good sense could ne be 
the effulgence, the lustre of the glory of the Father. He might exhibit 
an equal and rival glory, as one sun equally large and bright with 
another; but our Lord would, in that case, be no more an effulgence of 
the glory of the Father than one of these suns would be an effulgence 
of the other. The “ express image of his person” is equally a note of 
filial Divinity. ‘The word yapaxrnyp signifies an impression or mark, 
answering to a seal or stamp, or die, and therefore an exact and perfect 
resemblance, as the figure on the coin answers to the die by which it is 
stamped, and the image on the wax to the engraving on the seal. It 1s 
impossible that this should be spoken of a creature, because it cannot be 
true of any creature ; and therefore not true of the human nature of our 
Lord. ‘The sentiment is, indeed, too high for our ideas to reach. 
This, however, seems to be fully implied in it, that the Son is personally 
distinct from the Father, for the impression and the seal are not one 
thing, and that the essential nature of both is one and the same,” (Dr. 
P. Smith,) since one is so the exact and perfect image of the other, 
that our Lord could say, “ He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” 
(1). Still, however, the likeness is not that of one independent, and 
unrelated being to another, as of man to man ; but the more perfect one 
of Son to Father. So it is expressly affirmed; for it is “THe Son’ 
who is this “ express image :”’ nor would the resemblance of one inde- 
pendent Divine person to another come up to the idea conveyed by 
xXapaxrnp rng vrodradews. Both this and the preceding phrase, the 
“brightness of his glory,” with sufficient clearness denote not only 
sameness of essence and distinction of person, but dependence and com- 
munication also; ideas which are preserved and harmonized in the 
doctrine of the Sonsurp of Christ, and in no other. 

In the same conjunction of the term Son with ideas of absolute 
Divinity, the apostle, in a subsequent part of the same chapter, applies 
hat lofty passage in the forty-fifth Psalm, “ But unto the Son he suith, 
Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever,” &c. The Socinian criticisms 
on this passage have already been refuted; and it is only necessary te 
romark on this passage as it is in proof of the Divine Sonship. It is 
allowed, by all who hold his Deity, that Christ is here addressed as a 
being composed of two natures, God and man. “ The unction with the 
‘7 of gladness,’ and the elevation above his ‘ fellows,’ characterize the 
manhood; and the perpetual stability of kis throne, and the unsullied 


(1) ‘Imago majestatis Divine, ita, ut, qui Filium videt, etiam Patrem videat.” 
(Schleusner.) 


SECOND |} THEULOGICAL INSTITUTES 541 


justice of the government, declare the Gopuean.” (Bishop Horsley.) 
Ye is, however, called the Son; but this is a term which could not 
characterize the Being here introduced, unless it agreed to his higher 
and Divine nature. The Son is addressed ; that Son is addressed as 
(rod, as God whose throne is for ever and ever; and by this argument 
it is that the apostle proves the Son to be superior to angels. 

A few other passages may be introduced, which, with equal demon- 
atration, attach the term Son, eminently and emphatically, to our Lord’s 
Divine nature. 

‘God sending his own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh,” Romans 
vill, 3. Here the person entitled the Son, is said to be sent in the like. 
ness of sinful rLesH. In what other way could he have been sent, if he 
were Son only asa man? ‘The apostle most clearly intimates that he 
was Son before he was sent; and that FLEesH was the nature assumed 
by the Son, but not the nature in which he was the Son, as he there uses 
the term. 

“ Moses, verily, was faithful in all his house as a seRvANT, but Christ 
as a Son over his own house.” This is illustrative of the position 
before laid down, (verse 3,) that Jesus was counted worthy of more 
glory than Moses. The Jewish Jawgiver was only ‘as a sERVAN',’ but 
Christ ‘as a Son;’ but if the latter were only a Son in a metaphorical 
sense, the contrast would be entirely destroyed; he could only be a 
servant, like Moses, and the grounds of his superiority, as a Son, would 
be completely subverted ; he must, therefore, be a Son in respect to his 
Divine nature. In conformity with this conclusion, it is here said that 
Moses was faithful 1n all his house as a servant in the Jewish Church, 
but Christ was faithful over his own house; over the Christian Church 
as its Lord and Master.” (Holden’s Testimonies.) ‘* Moses erat ev rw 
oe), et pertinebat ad familiam ; Christus vero sas tov osxov, Supra fami- 
liam, ut ejus preefectus et dominius.” (Rosenmuller.) “He says that 
Moses was faithful as a servant—Christ as a Son, and that Christ was 
counted worthy of more glorv than Moses. inasmuch as he who hath 
nuilded the house hath more honour than the house; that is, the differ. 
ence between Christ and Moses is that which is between him who creates 
and the thing created.” (Bishop Tomline.) 'To be a Son is then, in the 
apostle’s sense of the passage, to be a Creator ; and to be a servant, a 
creature ; a decisive proof that Christ is called Son, as God, because he 
"s put in contradistinction to a creature. 

To these may be added all those passages in which the first person is 
called the Faruer of our Lord Jesus Christ; because as, when the 
persons are distinctly spoken of, it is clear, that he who produced the 
human nature of Christ, in the womb of the virgin, was the third 
person, a fact several times emphatically and expressly declared in the 
New Testament: so, as far as natura) relation is concerned, the first 


552 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PAR 


person can only have paternity with reference to the Divine nature of 
the Son; and weare reduced to admit, either that the terms Father and 
Son are wholly figurative, or that they express a natural relation, which 
relation, however,can only subsist between these persons in the Godhead. 

“For,” as it has been very justly observed, “at the very same time 
that our Lord, most expressly, calls the first person of the Godhead his 
Father, he makes the plainest distinction that is possible between the 
Father, as such, and the Holy Ghost. By the personal acts which he 
ascribes to the Spirit of God, he distinguishes the first person, as his 
Father, from the third person of the Divine essence; for, he said, ‘ I 
will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he 
may abide with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth ’ This Comforter, 
said he, ‘is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name. 
But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the 
Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he 
shall testify of me,’ John xiv, 16, 17, 26; xv, 26. Here our Lord 
calls the first person, most expressly and undeniably, ‘ the Father,’ and 
the third person, as expressly ‘the Holy Ghost.’ It is most evident, 
and beyond even the possibility of a doubt, that he does not, by these 
two appellatives, mean one and the self-same Divine person; for he 
says, he ‘ will pray the Father’ to send the Comforter to his Church, 
calling him ‘the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in his name.’ 
And he sends ‘the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of truth, from the Father, 
which proceedeth from the Father.’ Therefore. the Holy Ghost is not 
that Father, nor the self-same subsistent as tnat Father, nor is the 
creation of the human nature the only begetting, or the Scriptural 
Sonship of our Lord Jesus Christ; for, if this were really so, the Fa- 
ther would be sending forth the Father, and the Father would be pro- 
ceeding from the Father, and the Son would be praying for all this. 
But these are absurdities too glaring to be indulged for a single mo. 
ment by common sense; so that we conceive it must be as clear as 
the light of heaven, that the first and second persons of the Godhead 
are to each other a Father and a Son in the Divine essence.” (Mar- 
tin on the Eternal Sonship of Christ.) 

Thus, then, from the import of these passages, and many others 
might be added, were it necessary, I think that it is established, that 
the title Son or Gop is not an appellative of the human nature ap. 
plied by metonymy to the Divine nature, as the objectors say, and that 
it cannot, on this hypothesis, be explained. As little truth will be 
found in another theory, adopted by those who admit the Divinity of 
our Lord, but deny his eternal filiation ;—that he is called “Son of 
God” on account of his incarnation: that in the Old Testament he 
was sc called in anticipation of this event, and in the New because of 
the fact that he was God manifest in the flesh. 


‘SECOND.] ’ THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 093 


As, however, all such persons acknowledge the title “Son of God” to 
oe a descriptive, not an arbitrary title, and that it has its founda‘ion in 
some real relation ; so, if the incarnation of Christ be the foundation of 
shat title, it must be used with reference either to the nature in which 
he was incarnated, that is to say, his manhood; or to that which incar 
nated itself, that is to say, his Godhead ; or to the action of incarnation 
that is the act of assuming our nature. If the first be allowed, then this 
is Saying no more than that he is the Son of God, because of his mira- 
culous conception in the womb of the virgin, which has been alreadv 
refuted. If the second, then it is yielded, that, with reference to the 
Godhead, he is the Son, which is what we contend for; and it is 
allowed, that the “holy thing,” or offspring, born of Mary, is, therefore, 
called the Son of God, not because his. humanity was formed in her 
womb immediately by God ; but, as it is expressly stated in Luke 1, 35, 
because “ the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and:the power of the 
Highest shall overshadow thee,” the effect of which would be the 
assumption of humanity by the Divine nature of him who is, 1n that 
nature, the Son; and that the holy offspring should, on that account, be 
called the Son of God. ‘This would fully allow the doctrine of Chrisi’s 
Divine Sonship, and is, probably, the real import of the important 
passage referred to. (2) But if the title Son is given to Christ, neither 
with reference to the miraculous conception of the human nature, nor 
yet because the higher nature united to it in one person is, eminently 
and peculiarly, the Son of God; then it oniy remains to those who refer 
the title to the incarnation of our Lord, to urge that it is given to him 
with reference to the act of incarnation, that is to say, the act of 


(2) Many interpreters understand by “the power oF THE Hicuest,” which 
overshadowed the virgin, the second person of the trinity, who then took part of 
our nature. See Wolfii Cur. in loc. Most of them, however, refer both clauses 
to the Holy Spirit. But still, if the reason why the “ holy thing,” which was to 
be born of Mary, derived its special and peculiar sanctity from the personal 
union of the Divinity with the manhood, the reason of its being called the Son 
of God will be found rather in that to which the humanity was thus united than 
in itself. The remarks of Professor Kidd, in his * Dissertation on the Eternal 
Sonship of Christ,” are also worthy consideration. ‘Our Lord’s humar 
nature had never subsistence by itself.” ‘* That nature never had personality of 
itself.” ‘* Hence our Lord is the Son of God, with respect to his Divine nature, 
which alone was capable of Sonship. The question to be decided is, what object 
was termed the Son of God? Was it the human nature considered by itself? 
This it could not be, seeing that the humanity never, existed by itself, withcut 
inhering in the Divinity. Was it the humanity and Divinity, when unitec, 
which, in consequence of their union, obtained this as a mere appellation? We 
apprehend that it was not. We conceive, that the peculiarly appropriate 
name of our Lord’s Divine person is Son of God—that his person was not 
changed by the assumption of humanity, and that it is his eternal person, 
in the co.aplex natures of Divinity and humanity, which is denominated Son 


of God.” 


004 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, — [PART 


assuming our nature. Now, i is impossible to maintain this, because it 
has no support from Scripture. The passage in Luke 1, 35, has been 
adduced, but that admits certainly only of one of the two interpretations 
above given. Hither the coming of the Holy Ghost upon the virgin, 
and the overshadowing of the power of the Highest, refer to the ‘mme- 
diate production of the humanity by Divine power, so that for this rea- 
son h» is called the Son of God, which might be allowed without 
excluding a higher and more emphatic reason for the appellation ; or it 
expresses the assumption of human nature through the “ power of the 
Highest,” by the Divine nature of Christ, so that “the holy offspring” 
should be called “the Son of God,” not because a Divine person 
assumed humanity, but because that Divine person was antecedently 
the Son of God, and is spoken of as such by the prophets. The mere 
act of assuming our nature gives no idea of the relationship of a Son ; 
it is neither a paternal nor a filzal act in sny sense, nor expresses any 
such relation. It was an act of the San alone; “forasmuch as the 
children are partakers of flesh and blood, ne aLso rook part of the 
” and, as his own act, it could never place him in the relation of 
Son to the Father. It was done, it is true, in pursuance of the will of 
the Father, who “ sent him’’ on this errand of mercy into the world; 


same ;’ 


but it was still an act done by the Son, and could not lay the foundation 
of a filial title and character. This hypothesis cannot, therefore, he 
supported. If, then, the title ‘* Son or Gop,” as given to our Lord, is 
not used chiefly, probably not at all, with reference to his miraculous 
conception ; if it is not an appellative of his human nature, occasionally 
upphed to him when Divine acts and relations are spoken of, as any 
other human appellation, by metonymy, might be applied; if it is not 
given him simply because of his assuming our nature; if we find it so 
used, that it can be fully explained by no office with which he ts invested 
and by no event of his mediatorial undertaking ; it then follows, that it 
is a title characteristic of his mede of existence in the Divine essence, 
and of the relation which exists between the first and second persons in 
the ever blessed trinity. Nor is it to be regarded as a matter of indif- 
ference, whether we admit the eternal filiation of our Lord, provided we 
acknowledge his Divinity. It is granted, that some divines, truly 
decided on this point, have rejected the Divine Sonship. But in this 
they have gone contrary to the judgment of the Churches of Christ in 
ul ages; and they would certainly have been ranked among heretics 
in the first and purest times of the primitive Church, as Bishop Bull has 
largely and most satisfactorily shown in his “ Judgment of the Catholic 
Church ;” nor would their professions of faith in the Divinity of Christ 
have secured them from the suspicion of being allies in some sort of 
the common enemies of the faith, nor have been sufficient to guard 
them from the anathemas with which the fathers so carefully guaided 


SECOND. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 055 


the sacred doctrine of Scripture respecting the person of our Lord. 
Such theologians have usually rejected the doctrine, too, on dangerous 
grounds, and have resorted to modes of interpretation, so forced and 
unwarrantable, that, if turned against the doctrines which they them. 
selves hold sacred, would tend greatly to unsettle them. In these re- 
spects they have often adopted the same modes of attack, and objec 
tions »f the same character, as those which Arians and Socinians have 
wielded against the doctrine of the trinity itself, and have thus placed 
themselves in suspicious company and circumstances. ‘The very alle- 
gation that the Divine Sonship of Christ is a mere speculation, of no 
importance, provided his Divinity be held, is itself calculated to awa- 
ken vigilance, since the most important doctrines have sometimes 
been stolen away “while men have slept,” and the plea which has 
lulled them into security has always been, that they were not funda- 
mental. I would not, indeed, say that the doctrine in question is funda- 
_mental. I am not indisposed to give up that point with Episcopius 
and Waterland, who both admitted the Divine Sonship, though I would 
not concede its fundamental character on the same grounds as the for- 
mer, but with the caution of the latter, who had views much more cor- 
rect on the question of fundamental truths. But, though the Sonship 
of Christ may be denied by some who hold his Divinity, they do not 
carry out their own views into their logical conclusions, or it would 
appear that their notions of the rriniry greatly differ, 7n consequence, 
from those which are held by the believers in this doctrine; and that 
on a point, confessedly fundamental, they are, in some important re- 
spects, at issue with the orthodox of all ages. This alone demands 
their serious reflection, and ought to induce caution; but other consi- 
derations are not wanting to show that points of great moment are 
involved in the denial or maintenance of the doctrine in question. 

1. The loose and general manner in which many passages of Scrip 
ture, which speak of Christ as a Son, must be explained by those who 
deny the Divine filiation of Christ, seems to sanction principles of 
interpretation which would be highly daagerous, or rather absolutely 
fatal, if generally applied to the Scriptures. 

2. The denial of the Divine Sonship destroys all relation among 
the persons of the Godhead; for no other relation of the hypostases 
are mentioned in Scripture, save those which are expressed by pater. 
nity, filiation, and procession; every other relation is merely economi- 
cal; and these natural relations being removed, we must then con- 
ceive of the persons in the Godhead as perfectly independent of each 
other, a view which has a strong tendency to endanger the unity of 
the essence. (3) . 


2 


(3) “According to the opinioa of the ancients, which is also the voice of 
common sense, if there were two unbezotten or independent principles in the 


« 


550 THEOLOGICAT INSTITUTES. [PART 


3. It is the doctrine of the Divine paternity omy which preserves the 
Scriptural idea that the Father is the fountain of Deity, and, as such, 
the first, the original, the principle. Certainly, he must have read the 
Scriptures to little purpose, who does not perceive that this is their 
constant doctrine—that “of him are all things ;” that though the Soa 
is Creator, yet that it was “by the Son” the Father made the worlds; 
and that, as to the Son, he himself has declared, “ that he lives by «he 
Father,” and that the Father hath given him to have Lire IN HIMSELF, 
which can only refer to his Divine nature, nothing bemg the source of 
life in itself but what is Divine ; a view which is put out of all doubt by 
the declaration, that by the gift of the Father, the Son hath life in him- 
self, “as the Father hath life in himself.” But where the essential 
paternity of the Father and the correlative filiation of the Son are denied, 
these Scriptural representations have no foundation in fact, and are inca- 
pable of interpretation. ‘The term Son at once preserves the Scriptural 
character of the Father, and sets up an everlasting barrier against the 
Arian heresy of inferiority of essence ; for, as Son, he must be of the 
same essence as the Father. 

4. The Scriptural doctrines of the perfect rqauatiry of the Son, so 
that he is truly God, equal in glory and perfection to the Father, being 
of the same nature ; and, at the same time, the sunorprInaTIon of the 
Son to the Father, so that he should be capable of being “ sent,” are 
only to be equally maintained by the doctrine of the Divine Sonship.— 
According to those who deny this doctrine, the Son might as well be 
the first as the second person in the Godhead; and the Father the 


Divinity, the consequence would be, that not only the Father would be deprived 
of his pre-eminence, being of and from himself alone; but aiso, that there would 
necessarily be two Gods. On the other hand, supposing the subordination, by 
which the Father is God of himself, and the Son God of God, the doctors have 
thought both the Father’s pre-eminence and the Divine monarchy safe.” (Bishop 
Bull.) . 

‘* As it is admitted, that there are three persons in the Godhead, these three 
must exist, either independently of each other, or in related states. If they . 
exist independently of each other, they are, then, each an independent per- 
son, and may act independently and separately from the rest ; consequently, 
there would be three independent and separate Deities existing in the Divine 
essence” (Kidd.\ 

The orthodox faith keeps us at the utmost distance from this error. ‘ The 
Father,” says Bishop Bull, ‘‘is the principle of the Son and Holy Spirit, and 
both are propagated from him by an interior production, not an external one.— 
Hence it is, that they are not only of the Father, but in him, and the Father in 
them; and that one person cannot be separate from another in the holy 
trinity, as three human persons, or three other subjects of the same species are 
separate. ‘This kind of existing in, if I may so say, our divines call circuminces. 
sion, because by it some things are very much distinguished from ‘one another 
witlout separation ; are in, and as it were, penetrate one another, without cen 
fusson.” (Judgment of the Catholic Church.) 


SECOND.] | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 557 


second as well as the first. The Father might have been sent by the 
Son, without incongruity; or either of them by the Holy Spirit. On 
_the same ground, the order of the solemn Christian form of blessing, in 
the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, so often introduced in the New 
Testament, is grounded on no reason whatever, and might be altered at 
pleasure. These are most violent and repulsive conclusions, which the 
do:trine of the Sonship avoids, and thus proves its accordance with the 
Holy Scriptures. 

5. The love of the Father, in the gift of his Son, a doctrine so empha 
tically and so frequently insisted upon in Scripture, can have no place 
at all in the religious system of those who deny the relations of Father 
and Son to exist in the Godhead. This I take to be fatal to the doc- 
trine ; for it insensibly runs into the Socinian heresy, and restricts the 
love of the Father, in the gift of his Son, to the gift of a man only, if the 
Sonship of Christ be human only; and, in that case, the permission of 
the sufferings of Christ was no greater a manifestation of God’s love to 
the world than his permitting any other good man to die for the benefit 
of his fellow creatures,—St. Paul, for instance, or any of the martyrs. 
Episcopius, though he contends against the doctrine of the Divine Son- 
ship of our Lord being considered as fundamental, yet argues the truth 
of the doctrine on this very ground. 

«“ We have thus far adduced those passages of Scripture from which 
we believe it evident, that something more is ascribed to Jesus Christ 
than can possibly belong to him under the consideration of man born of 
a virgin; nay, something is attributed to him which not obscurely 
argues, that, before he was born of the virgin, he had been, ( fuisse 
atque extitisse,) and had existed as the Son of God the Father. The 
reasons derived from Scripture which seem to demonstrate this are the 
following :— 

“First, from John v, 18, and x, 33, it is apparent, that Jesus Christ 
had spoken in such a manner to the Jews, that they either understood 
or believed that nothing less than this was spoken by Christ, that he 
attributed to himself something greater than could be attributed to a 
human being,” &c. After proceeding to elucidate these two passages 
at some length, Episcopius adds, 

“The second reason is, it is certain the charity and love of God is 
amazingly elevated and extolled, by which he sent his own and only- 
begotten Son into the world, and thus gave him up, even to the death 
of the cross, to save sinners, who are the sons of God’s wrath.—(John 
‘ili, 16; Rom. v, 10, and viii, 32; 1 John iv, 9,10.) But if the only- 
begotten Son of God has no signification except Jesus with regard to his 
humanity and his being born of a virgin, the reason is not so apparent 
why this love should be so amazingly enhanced, as it is when God” 
mly-begotten Son signifies the Son who was begoiten of the Father before 


558 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


all ages. For that Son, who was born of the Virgin Mary, was born 
of her for this very purpose—that he might be delivered to death for 
sinners. But what pre-eminence of love is there in the fact of God 
delivering this, his Son, to death, whom it was his will to be born of 
Mary, and to be conceived of his Holy Spirit, with the intention that 
he should die for sinners? But if you form a conception of the Son of 
(tod, who was begotten of his Father before (ante secula) all worlds ; 
whom it was not compulsory to send into the world, and who was 
under no obligation to become man ; whose dignity was greater than 
allowed him to be involuntarily sent or to come into flesh, much less 
that he should be delivered to death ; nay, who, as the only-begotten 
and sole Son, appeared dearer to the Father than to be thrust out from 
him into this misery. When you have formed this conception in your 
mind, then will the splendour and glory of the Divine charity and love 
toward the human race shine forth with the greater intensity.” (Epzs- 
copit Inst. Theol.) 

To the doctrine of our Lord’s eternal Sonship some objections have 
been made, drawn from the supposed reason and nature of things ; but 
they admit of an easy answer. ‘The first is, “If the Son be of the 
Father in any way whatsoever, there must have been a commencement 
of his existence.” To this objection the following is a satisfactory 
answer :— 

« As sure, they are ready to argue, as every effect is posterior to its 
cause, so must Christ have been posterior to that God of whom he is 
the effect, or emanation, or offspring, or Son, or image, or by whatever 
other name you please to call him. Hence a Socinian writer says, 
‘The invention of men has been long enough upon the rack to prove, 
in opposition to common sense and reason, that an effect may be co- 
eternal with the unoriginate cause that produced it. But the proposition 
has mystery and falsehood written in its forehead, and is only fit to be 
joined with transubstantiation, and other mysteries of the same nature.’ 
If these terms are properly taken, it will be found, that though every 
effect may be said to be posterior to its cause, it is merely in the order 
of nature, and not of time; and, in point of fact, every effect, properly 
so called, is co-existent with its cause, and must, of necessity, exactly 
answer to it, both in magnitude and duration ; so that an actually infi. 
nite and eternal cause implies an actually infinite and eternal effect. 

“Many seem to imagine, as the words, cause and effect, must be 
placed one after the other, and the thing intended by the latter is dif- 
ferent from what is meant by the former, that, therefore, a cause must 
precede its effect, at least some very short time. But they ought to 
consider, that if any thing be a cause, it is a cause. It cannot bea 
cause and the cause of nothing ; no, not for the least conceivable space 


5? 
uf time. Whatever effect it may produce hereafter, it is not the actual 


SECOND. TILEGLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 559 


cause of 1t till it is actually in being; nor can it be in the very nature 
of tnings . 

“ Now, suppose I should call the Son of God the infinite and eternal 
effect of an infinite and eternal cause ; however the terms of the pro. 
position might be cavilled with, and however sophistry avail itself of the 
imperfection of human language and the ambiguity of words to puzzle 
tl e subject, in the sense in which I take the terms, cause and effect. 
the proposition is true, and cannot be successfully controverted. And 
though I would by no means affect such language, yet I should be justi- 
fied in its use by the early orthodox writers of the Church, both Greek 
and Latin, (4) who do not hesitate to call the Father the cause of the 
Son; though the Latins generally preferred using the term principium, 
which, in such a connection, is of the same import as cause. ‘Nor can 
we consider the following words of our blessed Redeemer in any other 
view : ‘I live by the Father,’ John vi, 57, and ¢ As the’ Father hath life 
in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself,’ John v, 
26. Such language can never be understood of the mere humanity of 
Christ. When the early ecclesiastical writers used the terms in ques- 
tion, it was not with the most distant intention of intimating any infe- 
riority of nature in the Son. And when they called him ‘ God of God,’ 
they never meant to represent him as a creature. Therefore, it was 
added to the expression, in the Nicene Creed, ‘ Light of Light, very 
God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance,’ or nature, 
‘with the Father and the Maker of all things.’ They neither confound 
the persons, nor divide the substance of the Godhead. And we shall 
soon see that, in this, they followed the obvious and undoubted meaning 
of the word of God. They made use of the very best terms they could 
find in human language, to explain the truth of God, in a most import- 
ant article of faith, and to defend it against the insidious attacks of 
heresy. And if those who affect to despise them would study their 
writings with candour, they would find that, though they were men, 
and as such liable to err, they were great men, and men who thought 
as well as wrote; who thought deeply on the things of God, and did 
not speak at random. 

«Some persons think they reduce the doctrine, 1n question, to an 
absurdity, by saying, ‘If the Father generate the Son, he must either be 
always generating him, or an instant must be supposed when his gene 
ration was completed. Gn the former supposition, the Son is and must 
ever remain imperfect, and, in fact, ungenerated ; on the latter, we must 
‘ atlow that he cannot be eternal.’ No one can talk in this manner who 
has not first confounded time with eternity, the creature with the Crea- 
tor; beings whose existence, and modes, and relations are swallowed 


(4) See Bull’s Defensic Fidei Nicaenac, and the notes of Bishop Pearson s 
most excellent work on the Creed 


o60 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 7 [PART 


up and lost in the Divine eternity and immensity with him who is. in all 
essential respects, eternal and infinite. ‘The orthodox maintain that tne 
Son of God is what he is from everlasting, as well as the Father. His 
veneration no more took place in any imaginary point of eternity than 
it took place in time. Indeed all duration, which is commenced, is time, 
and time it must ever remain. Though it may never end, it can never 
be actual eternity ; nor can any being, whose existence has coinmenc.ua, 
ever become actually eternal. The thing implies a contradiction in 
terms. 

“The nature of God is perfect from everlasting ; and the generation 
of the Son of God was no voluntary and successive act of God, but 
something essential to the Godhead, and therefore natural and eternal. 
We may illustrate this great subject, though we can never fully com- 
 prehend it. All natural agents, as we call them, act or operate uniformly 
and necessarily. If they should change their action or operation, we 
should immediately infer a change of their nature. For their existence, 
in a certain state, implies that action or operation. ‘They act or ope- 
rate by, what we call, a necessity of nature, or, as any plain uneducated 
man would express himself, it is their nature so to do. Thus the foun- 
tain flows. ‘Thus the sun shines. Thus the mirror reflects whatever is 
before it. No sooner did the fountain exist, in its natural state, than it 
flowed. No sooner did the sun exist, in its natural state, than it shone. 
No sooner did the mirror exist, in its natural state, than it reflected the 
forms placed before it. These actions or operations are all successive, 
and are measured by time, because the things from whence they result 
exist-In time, and their existence is necessarily successive. But had the 
fountain existed from everlasting, in its natural state, from everlasting it 
must have flowed. Had the sun so existed, so it must have shone. 
Had the mirror so existed, so it must have reflected whatever was 
before it. ‘The Son of God is no voluntary effect of the Father’s power 
and wisdom, like the created universe, which once did not exist, and 
might never have existed, and must, necessarily, be ever confined within 
the bounds of time and space: he is the natural and necessary, and 
therefore the eternal and infinite birth of the Divine fecundity, the 
boundless overflow of the eternal fountain of all existence and perfec- 
tion, the infinite splendour of the eternal sun, the, unspotted mirror and 
con.plete and adequate image, in whom may be seen all the fulness of 
the Godhead. This places the orthodox faith at an equal distance from 
the Sabellian and Arian heresies, and will ever make that distance 
absolutely infinite. This is no figure of speech, but a most sober truth.” 
(France’s Three Discourses on the Person of Christ.) 

Tn the eloquent and forcible passage just quoted, the opposition be 
tween a necessary and a voluntary effect is to be understood of arbitrary 
will; for, otherwise, the ancients scrupled not to say, that the genera 


SLUOND. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 561 


‘‘on o1 the Son was with the will of the Father ; soine, that he could 
not bur eternally will it, as being eternally good ; others, that, since the 
will of sod is God himself; as much as the wisdom of God is God him. 
self, whazever is the fruit and product of God, is the fruit and product 
of his wis, wisdom, &c ; and so the Son, being the perfect image of the 
Father, t« substance of substance, wisdom of wisdom, will of will, as he 
is light ox light, and God of God, which is St. Austin’s doctrine. ‘That 
the generation of the Son may be by necessity of nature, without exclud- 
,. Ing the concurrence or approbation of the will, in the sense of consent, 
approbation, and acquiescence, is shown by Dr. Waterland, in his 
“ Defence of Queries,” and to that the reader who is curious in such 
distinctions is referred. ‘They are distinctions, however, the subtlety of 
which will often be differently apprehended by different minds, and they 
are, therefore, scarcely allowable, except when used defensively, and tc 
silence an opposer who resorts to subtletics for the propagation of error. 
‘The sure rock is the testimony of Gop, which admits of no other con- 
sistent interpretation than that above given. ‘This being established, the 
incomprehensible and mysterious considerations, connected with the 
doctrine, must be left among those deep things of God which, in the 
present state at least, we are not able to searchand fathom. For this 
reason, the attempts which have been made to indicate, though faintly, 
the manner of the generation of the Son are not to be commended. 
Some of the Platonizing fathers taught, that the existence of the Son 
flowed necessarily from the Divine intellect exerted on itself The 
schoolmen agitated the question, whether the Divine generation was 
effected by intellect or by will. The Father begetting a Son, the cxact 
counterpart and equal of himself, by contemplating and exerting his 
intelligence upon himself, is the view advocated by some divines, by th 
of the Romish and Protestant communions. Analogies have also been 
framed between the generation of the Son by the Father and the mind’s 
generation of a conception of itself in thought. Some of these specu- 
lations are almost obsolete ; others continue to this day. It ought, how- 
ever, to be observed, that they are wholly unconnected with the fact, as 
it is stated, authoritatively and doctrinally stated, in Scripture. These 
are atmospheric halos about the sun of revelation, which, in truth, are 
the product of a lower region, though they may seem to surround the 
orb itself. Of these notions Zanchius has well observed, “ As we have 
no proof of these from the word of God, we must reject them as rash 
and vain, that is, if the thing be positively asserted so to be.” Indeed, 
we may ask, with the prophet, “ Who shall disclose his cuNERATION 2” 
On this subject, Cyril of Jerusalem wisely says, “ Believe, indeed, that 
God has a Son; but to know how this is possible be not curious. For 
f thou searchest, thou shalt not find. Therefore, elevate not thyself, 

in the attempt,) lest thou fall. Be careful to understand those things 

Vou I 36 


AZ THEGLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


alone which are delivered to thee as commands. First, declare to me 
who is th: Father, and then thou wilt acknowledge the Son. Bur if thou. 
canst not ascertain (cognoscere) the nature of the Father, display no 
curiosity about knowing the mode of the Son. With regard to thyself, 
it is sufficient for all the purposes of godliness to know, th:.t God has 
une only Son.” 

Proved then, as I think it irrefragably is, by Scripture testimany, 
that the title “Son or Gop” contains a revelation of the Pvinity of our 
Lord, as a person of the same nature and essence with the Father, we 
may proceed to another of the most emphatic and celebre.ted appellations 
of our blessed Saviour—* THe Worp.” 

Under this title our Saviour is abruptly announced in the introduction 
to St. John’s Gospel, for that he is intended cannot be a matter of doubt. 
In the 5ih verse, “the Word” is called “the Light.” In verse 7, John 
Baptist is said to bear witness of that “ Light.” Again, in verse 14, the 
Word is said to have been made flesh, and to have dwelt among us; 
and, in verse 15, that “ John bears witness of him.” ‘The Word” and 
“the Light,” to whom John bears witness, are names, therefore, of 
the same Being; and that Being is, in verse 17, declared to be Jesus 
Christ. (5) 

The manner in which St. John commences his Gospel is strikingly 
different from the introductions to the histories of Christ by the other 
evangelists; and no less striking and peculiar is the title under which he 
announces him-—“'Tnr Worp.” It has, therefore, been a subject o: 
much inquiry and discussion, from whence this evangelist drew the use 
of this appellation, and what reasons led him, as though intending te 
solicit particular attention, to place it at the very head of his Gospel. 
That it was for the purpose of establishing an express opinion, as to the 
personal character of him whom it is used to designate, is made more 
than probable from the predominant character of the whole Gospel. 
which is more copiously doctrinal, and contains a record more full of 
what Jesus “ said,” as well as “did,” than the others. 

As to the source from which the term “ Logos” was drawn by the 
apostles, some have held it to be taken from the Jewish Scriptures ; 
others, from the Chaldee paraphrases ; others from Philo and the Hel. 
lenizing Jews. ‘The most natural conclusion certainly appears to be, 
that, as St. John was a plain, ‘“ unlearned” man, chiefly conversant in 
the Holy Scriptures, he derived this term from the sacred books of his 
own nation, in which the Hebrew phrase Dabar Jehovah, the Word of 


(5) ‘ Per rov Aoyov intelligi Christum, caret dubio, Nam v. 6, 7, Scriptor dicit, 
Joannem Baptistam dehoc doyw testimonium dixisse; constat autem eum de 
Christo dixisse testimonium ; et v. 14, sequiter, Aoyoy hominem esse factum, et 
Apostolos hujus Aoyov, hominis facti, vidisse dignitatem ; atqui Christi majesia 
tem quotidie oculis videbant.” (Rousenmuller.) 


6ECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 563 


Jchovah, frequently occurs in passages which must be understood to 
speak of a personal Word, and which phrase is rendered ‘00g xupiou by 
the Septuagint interpreters. Certainly, there is not the least evidence 
in his writings, or in his traditional history, that he ever acquainted him- 
self with Philo or with Plato; and none, therefore, that he borrowed the 
term from them, or used it in any sense approaching to or suggested by 
these refinements :—In the writings of St. Paul there are allusions tc 
poets and philosophers; in those of St. John, none. We have already 
seen that the Hebrew Scriptures contain frequent intimations of a dis- 
tinction of persons in the Godhead : that one of these Divine persons is 
called Jenovan; and though manifestly represented as existing dis- 
tinct from the Father, is yet arrayed with attributes of Divinity, and was 
acknowledged by the ancient Jews to be, in the highest sense, “ thezr 
God,” the God with whom, through all their history, they chiefly “ had 
todo.” This Divine person we have already proved to have been 
spoken of by the prophets as the future Christ; we have shown, too, 
that the evangelists and apostles represent Jesus as that Divine person 
of the prophets; and, if in the writings of the Old Testament, he is also 
called “tHe Worp,” the application of this term to our Lord is natu- 
rally accounted for. It will then appear to be a theological, not a 
philosophic appellation, and one which, previously even to the time of 
the apostle, had been stamped with the authority of inspiration. It is 
not, indeed, frequentiy used in the Old Testament, which may account 
for its not being adopted as a prominent title of Christ by the other 
evangelists and apostles ; but that, notwithstanding this infrequency, it 
is thus used by St. John has a sufficient reason, which shall be presently 
adduced. Ader 
In Genesis xv, 1, we are told, that “the Worp of the Lord came unto 
Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: J am thy shield and thy 
exceeding great reward.” Here the Worp of the Lord is the speaker— 
«the Word came—saying :” a mere word may be spoken or said; but 
a personal Word only can say, “ I am thy shield.” ‘The pronoun J re- 
fers to the whole phrase, “the Word of Jehovah ;” and if a personal 
Word be not understood, no person at all is mentioned by whom this 
message is conveyed, and whom Abram, in reply, invokes as “ Lorp 
Gop.” The same construction is seen in Psalm xviii, 30, “’The Word 
of the Lord is tried; he isa buckler to all that trust in him.” Here the 
pronouns refer to “ rz Worp of the Lord,” in the first clause ; nor is 
there any thing in the context to lead us to consider the Word mention- 
ed to be a grammatical word, a verbal communication of the will of an- 
other, in opposition to a personal Word. This passage is, indeed, less 
eapable of being explained, on the supposition of an ellipsis, than that in 
Genesis. In this personal sense, also, 1 Sam. iii, 21, can only be natu- 


rally interpreted. “And the Lord appeared again in Shiloh ; for the 


564 THEOLOGICAI INSTITUTES. [PARY 


Lord revealed (showed) himself to Samuel in Shiloh, b, THz Worp or 
THE Lorp.” Here it is first declared, that the Lord appeared; then 
follows the manner of his appearance, or manifestation, “ by the Word 
of the Lord.” In what manner could he appear, except by his personal 
Word in vision? Again, a comparison of two passages will make it 
probable, that the personal Worp is intended in some passages, and was 
so understood by the ancient Jews, where there are no marked circum: 
stances of construction to call our attention to it. In 2 Sam. vil, 21, 
we find, “ For thy Worp’s sake, and according to thine own heart, hast 
thou done all these things.” But in the parallel passage in 1 Chron. 
xvii, 19, it is read, “O Lord, for thy servant’s sake, and according to 
thine own heart, hast thou done all this greatness.” Servant is unques- 
tionably an Old Testament appellation of Messiah; and not a few 
passages might be adduced, where the phrases “ for thy servant’s sake,” 
“for thy name’s sake,” indicate a mediatorial, character vested in some 
exalted and Divine personage. The comparison of these two passages, 
however, is sufficient to show, that a personal character is given to the 
Word mentioned ‘in the former. | 

All that has been said by opposing criticism, upon these and a few 
other passages in which the phrase occurs, amounts to no more than 
that they may be otherwise interpreted, by considering them as elliptical 
expressions. ‘The sense above given is, however, the natural and ob- 
vious one; and if it also accounts better for the frequent use of the 
terms “ Word,” “ Word of the Lord,” among the ancient Jewish writers, 
this is an additional reason why it should be preferred. The Targum. 
ists use it with great frequency ; and should we even suppose Philo 
and the Hellenistic Jews to have adopted the term Logos from Plato and 
the Greeks, yet the favouritism of that term, so to speak, and the higher 
attributes of glory and Divinity with which they invest their Logos, is 
best accounted for by the correspondence of this term with one which 
they had found before, not only among their own interpreters, but in the 
sacred writings themselves. 

Reference has been made to the Targums, and .they are in farther 
evidence of the theological origin of this appellation. The Targums, 
or Chaldee paraphrases of the Old Testament, were composed for the 
use of the common people among the Jews, who, after their return from 
captivity, did not understand the original Hebrew. They were read 
in the synagogues every Sabbath day, and with the phrases they con. 
tain all Jews would, of course, be familiar. Now, in such of these para. 
phrases as are extant, so frequently does the phrase “ the Word of Jeho. 
vahk” occur, that in almost every place where Jehovah is mentioned in 
the Old Testament as holding any intercourse with men, this circumlo- 
cution is used. ‘The Lord created man in his own image,” is, in the 
Jerusalem Targum, “The Word of Jehovah created man.” “ Adam 


SECOND. } THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 565 


and Eve heard the voice of the Lord God,” is paraphrased, “they heard 
the voice of the Word of the Lord God.” “The Lord thy God, he it 
is that goeth before thee,” is in the Targum, “Jehovah thy God, his 
Word goeth before thee.” The Targumists read, for “I am thy shield,” 
Gen. xv, 1, “My Word is thy shield ;” for “Israel shall be saved in 
the Lord,” Isa. xlv, 17, “by the Word of the Lord ;” for “I am with 
thee,” Jer. i, 8, “ My Word is with thee ;” and in Psalm cx, 1, instead 
of “the Lord said unto my Lord,” they read, “the Lord said unto his 
Word ;” and so in a great number of places. 

The Socinian answer is, that this is an idiom of the Chaldee language, 
and that “the word of a person is merely synonymous to himself.” It 
must certainly be allowed that the Memra of the Chaldee paraphrasts 
has not in every case a personal sense, nor, indeed, has Logos, or Word 
by which it may be translated ; but, as the latter is capable of being used 
- in a personal sense, so is the former ; and, if passages can be found in 
the Targums where it is evident that it is used personally and as distinct 
from God the Father, and cannot, without absurdity, be supposed to be 
used otherwise, the objection is fully invalidated. ‘This has, I think, been 
very satisfactorily proved. So in one of the above instances, “ They 
heard the voice of the Word of the Lord God walking in the garden.” 
Here walking is undoubtedly the attribute of a person, and not of a mere 
voice; and that the person referred to is not the Father, appears from 
the author, T'zeror Hammor, who makes this observation on the place, 
“ Before they sinned, they, saw the glory of the blessed God speaking 
with him, that is, with God ; but after their sin they only heard the voice 
walking.” A trifling remark ; but sufficient to show that the Jewish 
expositors considered the voice as a distinct person from God. 

The words of Elijah, 1 Kings xviii, 24, “ I will call on the name of the 
Lord,” &c, are thus paraphrased by Jonathan : “I will pray in the name 
of the Lord, and he shall send his Word.” The paraphrast could not 
refer to any message from God ; for it was not an answer by word, but 
by fire, that Elijah expected. It has never been pretended, either by 
Socinians, or by the orthodox, that God the Father is said to be sent. 
If there be but one Divine person, by whom is he sent? 

We learn from Gen. xvi, 7, &c, that “the Angel of the Lord found 
Hagar by a fountain of water ;”- that he said, “ I will multiply thy seed 
exceedingly,” and that “she called the name of Jenovan that spuke to 
her, Thou God seest me.”’ It is evident that Hagar considered the person 
who addressed heras Divine. Philo asserts that it was the Word who 
appeared to her. Jonathan gives the same view. “She confessed 
before the Lord Jenovan, whose Word had spoken to her.” With 
this the Jerusalem Targum agrees: “She confessed and prayed to the 
Word of the Lord who had appeared to her.” It is in vain to say, in the 
Socinian sense, that God himself is here meant. For the paraphrasts 


oF6 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. |PART 


must have known, from the text, that the person spoken of is called an 
angel. If the Father be meant, how is he called an angel? 

“They describe the Word as a Mediator. It is said, Deut. iv, 7, 
: For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them as the 
Lord our God is in all things that we call upon hum for ?? Jonathan gives 
the following paraphrase of the passage : ‘God is near in the name of 
the Word ¢‘ the Lord.’ Again, we find this paraphrase on Hos. iv, 9, 
‘God will receive the prayer of Israel by his Word, and have mercy 
upon them, and will make them by his Word like a beautiful fig tree.’ 
And on Jer. xxix, 14, ‘I will be sought by you in my Word, and | 
will be inquired of through you by my Word.’ According to the Jeru- 
salem Targum on Gen. xxi, 33, Abraham at Beersheba ‘ prayed in the 
name of the Word of the Lord, the God of the world.’ But it is incon- 
ceivable that the paraphrasts did not here mean to describe the Word 
as a Mediator; especially as we know that the ancient Jews, when sup- 
plicating God, entreated that he would ‘look on the face of his anointed.’ 

“They speak of atonement as made by this Memra. On Deut. xxxui, 
43, Jonathan observes, ‘God will atone by his Word for his land, and 
for his people, even a people saved by the Word of the Lord.’ 

“They describe the Memra as a Redeemer, and sometimes as the 
Messiah. ‘These words, Gen. xlix, 18, ‘I have waited for thy salvation.’ 
are thus paraphrased in the Jerusalem Targum: ‘ Our father Jacob said 
thus, My soul expects not the redemption of Gideon the son of Joash, 
which is a temporary salvation; nor the redemption of Samson, which 
is a transitory salvation ; but the redemption which thou didst promise 
should come through thy Memra to thy people. This salvation my soul 
waits for.’ In the blessing of Judah (ver. 10-12) particular mention is 
made of the King Messiah. It is a striking proof that by the Memra 
they meant him who was to appear as the Messiah, that in the Targum 
of Jonathan, verse 18 is thus rendered: ‘Our father Jacob said, I do 
not expect the deliverance of Gideon the son of Joash, which is a tem 
poral salvation ; nor that of Samson the son of Manoah, which is a tran 
sient salvation. But I expect the redemption of the Messiah, the Son 
of David, who shall come to gather to himself the children of Israel.’ 
It is evident that the one paraphrast has copied from the other; and 
as the one puts Messiah for Memra, it cannot well be denied that they 
liad considered both terms as denoting the same person. 

“They describe this Memra as only begotten, and, in this character, as 
the Creator. ‘That remarkable verse, Gen. iii, 22,‘ The Lord God said, 
Behold, the man is become as one of us,’ is paraphrased in a very singu- 
lar manner: ‘The Word of the Lord said, Behold, Adam whom I have 
created, is the only begotten in the world, as I am the only begotten in 
the highest heavens.’ ‘The language here ascribed to the Memra, with 
what reference to the text avails not in the present inquiry, is appli 


SECOND. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 567 


cable to a person omy; and it will not be pretended by our opponents, 
that it can apply to the Father. The person intended was believed 
to be the only-begotten Word.’ How nearly does this language ap. 
proach to that of inspiration! ‘In the beginning was the Word. All 
things were made by him. We beheld his glory, the glory as of the 
only begotten of the Father, John i, 1, 3. 

“Tf, therefore, the paraphrasts describe the Memra as one sent, as a 
Mediator, as one by whom atonement is made, as a Redeemer and the 
Messiah, and as only begotten; it is undeniable that they do not mean 
God the Father. If, notwithstanding, they ascribe personal and Divine 
characters to the Word, they must mean a distinct person in the Divine 
essence.” (Jamieson’s Vindication.) 

The same personality and the same distinction we find in the pas- 
sage, “ God came to Abimelech ;” in the Targum, “his Word came 

_from the face of God to Abimelech.” Equally express is the personal 
distinction in Psalm cx, 1, “Jehovah said unto his Word, Sit thou at 
my right hand.” Here the Word cannot be the Jehovah that speaks, 
and a person only could sit at his right hand. This passage, too, 
proves that the ancient Jews applied the term Word to the Messiah ; 
for,as we may learn from our Lord’s conversation with the Pharisees, 
it was a received opinion that this passage was spoken of the Messiah. 

Now, as some of the Targums still extant are older than the Chris- 
tian era, and contain the interpretations of preceding paraphrases 
now lost ; and as there is so constant an agreement among them in 

_the use of this phrase, we can be at no loss to discover the source 
whence St. John derived the appellative Logos. He had found it in 
the Hebrew Scriptures, and he had heard it, in the Chaldee paraphrases, 
read in the synagogues, by which it was made familiar to every Jew. 
Dr. P. Smith, in his Scripture Testimony, hesitates as to the personal 
sense of the Memra of the Chaldean paraphrasts, and inclines to con- 
sider it as used in the sense of a reciprocal pronoun, denoting, in its 
usual application to the Divine Being, God his very self. On this 
supposition it is, however, impossible to interpret some of the passages 
above given. Its primary import, he says, “is that, whatever it may 
be, which is the MEDIuM of communicating the mind and intentions 
of one person to another.” The Jews of the same age, or a little 
after, and Philo, he admits, used the term Word with a personal refer- 
ence, for such “an eatension and reference of the term would flow from 
the primary signification, a Mepium of rational communication ;” but 
if Philo and those Jews thus eatended the primary meaning of this 
word, why might not the Chaldee paraphrasts extend it before them? 
They did not invent the term, and affix to it its primary meaning. 
They found it in the Chaldee tongue, as we find Word in English ; 
und that they sometimes use it in its primary sense ig no proof at all 


568 THEOLUGICAL INS1 TUTES. [PART 


that they did not use it also .n a personal or extended one. That a 
second Jehovah is mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures, as the medium 
of communication with men, cannot be denied, and Memra would, there- 
tore, be, according to this explanation of its primary meaning, a most fit 
term to express his person and office. Itisalso astrong evidence in faycur 
of the personal sense of this term, that “ Maimonides himself, aNnX1OUS af 
he was to obscure all those passages of Scripture that imply a Divine 
plurality, and to conceal every evidence of the Jews having ever held 
this doctrine, had not boldness enough to assert, that with the Chaldee 
interpreters, the Word of God was merely ‘synonymous to God’ himself. 
He knew that the Targums afforded such unquestionable evidence of 
the introduction of a distinct person under this designation, that every 
one of his countrymen, who was in the least acquainted with them, 
would give him the lie. Therefore he finds himself reduced to the 
miserable shift of pretending that, when the paraphrasts speak of the 
Word of the Lord, and use this expression where the name of God 
occurs in the original, they mean to describe a created angel.” (6) 

“ Upon the whole, then,” says Dr. Laurence, “ how are we to deter- 
mine the sense of this singular phrase? Although we consider it neither 
as a reciprocal, nor as intended to designate the second person in the tri- 
nity, who, becoming incarnate, lived and died for us, (of which, perhaps, 
the Targumists themselves might have had, at best, but indistinct or 
even incorrect ideas,) yet may we, most probably, regard it, in its gene- 
ral use, as indicative of a Divine person. That it properly means the 
Word of the Lord, or his will declared by a verbal communication, and 
that it is sometimes literally so taken, cannot be denied, but it seems 
impossible to consult the numerous passages, where personal character- 
istics are attributed to it, and to conceive that it does not usually point out 
areal person. Whether the Targumist contemplated this hypostatical 
word as a true subsistence in the Divine nature, or as a distinct emana. 
tion of Deity, it may be useless to inquire, because we are deficient in 
data adequate to a complete decision of the question.” (Dissertation. 

Philo and the philosophic Jews may, therefore, be well spared in the in- 
quiry as to the source from whence St. John derives the appellative Logos. 
Whether the Logos of Philo be a personified attribute or a person has 
been much disputed, but is of little consequence on this point. It may, 
however, be observed, that as the evidence predominates in favour of the 
personality, of the Logos of Philo, in numerous passages of his writings, 
this will also show, that not only the Jewish writers, who composed the 
paraphrases, and the common people among the Jews, in consequence of 
the ‘l'argums being read in the synagogues but also those learned men 


(6) Bt fut Verbum Domini ad me, &c. Fivri quoque potest meo judicio ut 
Onkelos per vocem Elohim, Angelum ji itellexerit, &c. (More Nevochim, par i, 


¢. 27, p. 33.) 


SECOND. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 569 


who addicted themselves to the study of the Greek philosophy, were 
familiar with the idea of a Logos as a person distinct from God, yet in- 
vested with Divine attributes and performing Divine works. The ques. 
tion as to Philo is not whether he sometimes speaks of a personified 
Logos, that is, of an attribute or conception of God, arrayed in poetic, 
personal properties : this is granted; but whether he also speaks of a 
Logos, who is a real and a Divine person. Now, when he calls this 
logos God, a second God, the Son of God, the first begotten, the be- 
loved Son; speaks of him as superior to angels, as the Creator of the 
world, as seeing all things, as the Governor and Sustainer, as a Mes. 
senger, as the Shepherd of the flock; of men being freed from their 
sins by him, as the true High Priest, as a Mediator, and in other similar 
and personal terms, which may all be verified by consulting his writings, 
or the selections given in Kidd’s Demonstration, Allix’s Judgment, Bry- 
ant’s Philo, Laurence’s Dissertation, and other works ;-he cannot, by any 
possibility of construction, be supposed to personify the mere attribute 
of the reason or wisdom of God, or any conception and operation of the 
Divine intellect. This may be the only Logos of Plato ; for, though the 
Christianized Platonists, of a lower period, used this term in a personal 
sense, there is but slender evidence to conclude that Plato used it as the 
name of a person distinct from God. Certain it is, that the Logos of 
Philo is arrayed in personal characters which are not found in the 
writings of Plato; a fact which will with great difficulty be accounted for, 
upon the supposition that the Jewish philosopher borrowed his notions 
from the Greek. Philo says, that “ the Father has bestowed upon this 
Prince of angels his most ancient Logos, that he should stand as a Media- 
tor. to judge between the creature and the Creator. He, therefore, 
intercedes with him, who is immortal, in behalf of mortals; and, on the 
other hand, he acts the part of an ambassador, being sent from the 
supreme King to his subjects. And this gift he so willingly accepts, as 
to glory in it, saying, I have stood between God and you, being neither 
- unbegotten as God, nor begotten like mortals, but one in the middle, 
between two extremes, acting the part ofa hostage with both ; with the 
Creator, as a pledge that he willnever be provoked to destroy or desert 
the world, so as to suffer it to run into confusion; and, with creatures, to 
give them this certain hope, that God, being reconciled, will never cease 
to take care of his own workmanship. For I proclaim peace to the 
¢ieation from that God who removes war and introduces and preserves 
peace for ever.” Now, when he expresses himself in this manner, who 
can reconcile this toa mere personification from the Greek philosophy ? 
or suppose that Philo obtained from that ideas so evangelical, that, were 
there not good evidence that he was not acquainted with Christianity,we 
should rather conceive of him as of “a scribe,” so far as this passage 
goes, “ well instructed” in the kingdom of heaven? Even Dr. Priestley 


570 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. (PART 


acknowledges that Philo “made a much more substantial personifica- 
tion of the Logos than any of the proper Platonists had done.” (Early 
Opinions.) Substantial, indeed, it is ; for, although, in some passages, 
in the vigour of his discursive and allegorizing genius, “he enshrines 
his Iogos behind sucha veil of fancy, that we can scarcely discern his 
person in the sanctuary,” yet in the above, and many other passages, 
‘he draws aside the veil and shows him to us in his full proportions.” 
( Whitaker’s Origin of Arianism.) For what conceivable attribute of 
Deity, or ideal thing whatever, could any writer, allegorist as he might 
be, not insanely raving, call “ Prince of angels,” “ Mediator,” “ Inter- 
cessor,” “neither unbegotten as God, nor begotten like mortals,” “an 
Ambassador” sent from God to men, interposing between an offended 
God to restrain his anger and to give “peace” to the world? Who 
could speak of these attributes or idealities in language anticipatory of 
an incarnation, as “a man of God, immortal and incorruptible,” as “the 
man after the image of God,” or ascribe to him a name “unspeakable 
and incomprehensible,” and affirm that he is a “ fabricator,” or Crea- 
tor, and “ Divine, who will lie up close to the Father,” exactly where 
St. John places him “in the very bosom of the Father.” For, however 
mysteriously Philo speaks in other passages, he says nothing to contra- 
dict these, and they must be taken as they are. They express a real 
personality, and they show, at the same time, that they could not be bor- 
rowed trom Plato. It is not necessary to enter into the question, whether 
that philosopher ascribed a real personality to his Logos or not. If he 
gives him a real and Divine personality, then the inference will be, that 
he derived his notion from the Jews, or from ancient patriarchal tradition; 
and it would be most natural for Philo, finding a personal and Divine 
Logos in Plato, to enlarge the scanty conceptions of the philosopher from 
the theology of his own country. On the other hand, if we suppose the 
Logos of Plato to bea mere personification, either Philo must have im- 
proved it into a real person, consistent with his own religion; or, some- 
times philosophizing on a mere personified Logos, and sometimes intro- 
ducing the personal Logos of his own nation and native schools, we have 
the key to all those passages which would appear inconsistent with each 
other, if interpreted only of one and the same subject, and ifhe were re- 
garded as speaking exclusively either of a personified or a real Logos, 
« From all the circumstances it seems to be the most reasonable con- 
clusion, that the leading acceptation of the Memra or Logos among 
the Jews of this middle age was to designate an intermediate agent ; 
that, in the sense of a Mediator, between God and man, it became a 
recognized appellation of the Messiah; that the personal doctrine of the 
Worp was the one generally received, and that the conceptual notion 
which Philo interweaves with the other was purely his own invention, the 
result of his theological philosophy.” (Dr. Smith’s Person of Christ \ 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 571 


As the doctrine of a personal Logos was not derived by Philo from 
Matonism, so his own writings, as decidedly as the reason of the case 
‘tself, will show, that the source from which he did derive it was the 
Scriptures and the Chaldee paraphrases, or, in other words, the esta- 
blished theology of his nation. Philo had not suffered the doctrine of 
the Hebrew Scriptures, of a Jehovah acting in the name and under the 
commission of another Jehovah as well as his own, to go unnoticed 
The passages of the Old Testament, in which a personal Word, the 
Dabar Jehovah, occurs, had not been overlooked, nor the more frequent 
nse of an equivalent phrase in the Memra of the paraphrasts. “ ‘There 
is a time,” he observes, “ when he (the holy Logos) inquires of some, 
as of Adam, Where art thou?” exactly corresponding with the oldest 
Targumists, “'THr Worp of the Lord called to Adam.” Again, with 
reference to Abraham and Lot,—* of whom (the Logos) it is said the 
sun came out upon the earth, and Lot entered into Sijor, and the Lord 
rained brimstone and fire upon Sodom and Gomorrah. For the Logés 
of God, when he comes out to our earthly system, assists and helps 
those who are related to virtue,’ &c. So by Onkelos and Jonathan, 
the appearances of God to Abram are said to be appearances of the 
Word, and twice in the fifteenth chapter of Genesis, “ the Word of the 
Lord” is said to come to Abraham. The Being who appeared to Hagar, 
of whom she said, “ Thou God seest me,” Philo also calls the Logos. 
The Jehovah who stood above the ladder of Jacob and said, “ lam the 
Lord God of Abraham thy father,” has the same appellation, and he 
who spake to Moses from the bush. It is thus that Philo accords with 
the most ancient of the interpreters of his nation in giving the title 
Memra, Logos, or Word, to the ostensible Deity of the Jewish dispen- 
sation, in which, too, they were authorized by the use of the same term, 
in the same application, by the sacred writers themselves. Why, then, 
resort to Plato, when the source of the Logos of Philo is so plainly in- 
dicated? and why suppose St. John to have borrowed from Philo, when 
tie Logos was an established form of theological speech, and when the 
sources from which Philo derived it, the Scriptures and the para- 
phrases, were as accessible to the apostle as to the philosophical Jew 
of Alexandria? 

As Philo mingled Platonic speculations with his discourses on the real 
Logos of his national! faith, without, however, giving up personality and 
Divinity ; so the Jews of his own age mingled various crude and dark- 
ening comments with the same ancient faith drawn from the Scriptures, 
and transmitted with the purer parts of their tradition. The paraphrases 
and writings of Philo remain, however, a striking monument of the ex- 
istence of opinions as to a distinction of persons in the Godhead, and the 
Divine character of a Mediator and interposing agent between God and 
man, as indicated in their Scriptures, and preserved by their theologians. 


572 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. - [PART 


Celebrated as this title of the Logos was in the Jewish theology, it is 
not, however, the appellation by which the Spirit of inspiration has 
chosen that our Saviour should be principally designated. It occurs 
but a very few times, and principally and emphatically in the introduction 
to St. John’s Gospel. A cogent reason can be given why this apostle 
adopts it, and we are not without a probable reason why, in the New 
' 'Testament, the title Son or Gop should have been preferred, which is, 
likewise, a frequent title of the Logos in the writings also of Philo. 

“ Originating from the spiritual principle of connection, between the 
first and the second Being in the Godhead ; marking this, by a spiritual 
idea of connection; and considering it to be as close and as necessary 
as the Word is to the energetic mind of God, which cannot bury its 
intellectual energies in silence, but must put them forth in speech ; it 
is too spiritual in itself to be addressed to the faith of the multitude. 
If with so full a reference to our bodily ideas, and so positive a _filiation 
of the second Being to the first, we have seen the grossness of Arian 
criticism, endeavouring to resolve the doctrine into the mere dust of a 
figure ; how much more ready would it have been to do so, if we had 
only such a spiritual denomination as this for the second? This would 
certainly have been considered by it as too unsubstantial for distinct 
personality, and therefore too evanescent for equal Divinity.” (Whz2ta- 
ker’s Origin of Arianism.) 

Of the reason of its occasional use by St. John, a satisfactory account 
may also be given. ‘The following is a clear abridgment of the ampler 
discussions on this subject which have employed many learned writers. 

“ Not long after the writings of Philo were published, there arose the 
Gnostics, a sect, or rather a multitude of sects, who having learnt in the 
same Alexandrian school to blend the principles of oriental philosophy 
with the doctrine of Plato, formed a system most repugnant to the sim- 
plicity of Christian faith. It is this system which Paul so often attacks 
under the name of ¢ false philosophy, strife of words, endless genealogies, 
science, falsely so called.’ The foundation of the Gnostic system was 
the intrinsic and incorrigible depravity of matter. Upon this principle 
they made a total separation between the spiritual and the material 
world. Accounting it impossible to educe out of matter any thing 
which was good, they held that the Supreme Being, who presided over 
the innumerable spirits that were emanations from himself, did not make 
this earth, but that a spirit of an inferior nature, very far removed in 
character as well as in rank from the Supreme Being, formed matter 
into that order which constitutes the world, and gave life to the different 
creatures that inhabit the earth. They held that this inferior spirit was 
the ruler of the creatures whom he had made, and they considered men, 
whose souls he imprisoned in earthly tabernacles, as experiencing under 
his dominion the misery which necessarily arose from their connection 


_ BECOND.] . THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 573 


with matter, and as estranged from the knowledge of the true God. 
Most of the later sects of the Gnostics rejected every part of the Jewish 
‘aw, because the books uf Moses gave a view of the creation inconsistent 
with their system. But some of the earlier sects, consisting of Alexan. 
drian Jews, incorporated a respect for the law with the principles of 
their system. They considered the Old Testament dispensation as 
granted by the Demiurgus, the make? and ruler of the world, who was 
-nceapable from his want of power, of delivering those who received it 
from the thraldom of matter: and they looked for a more glorious mes- 
senger, whom the compassion of the Supreme Being was to send for the 
purpose of emancipating the human race. Those Gnostics who em-.. 
braced Christianity, regarded the Christ as this Messenger, an exalted 
Zon, who, being in some manner united to the man Jesus, put an end 
to the dominion of the Demiurgus, and restored the souls of men to 
communion with God. It was natural for the Christian Gnostics who 
had received a Jewish education to follow the steps of Philo, and the 
general sense of their countrymen, in giving the name Logos to the 
Demiurgus. And as Christos was understood from the beginning of our 
Lord’s ministry to be the Greek word equivalent to the Jewish name 
Messiah, there came to be, in their system, a direct opposition between 
Christos and Logos. The Logos was the maker of the world: Christos 
was the Zon sent to destroy the tyranny of the Logos. 

“ One of the first teachers of this system was Cerinthus. We have 
not any particular account of all the branches of his system; and it is 
possible that we may ascribe to him some of those tenets by which later 
sects of Gnostics were discriminated. But we have authority for saying 
that the general principle of the Gnostic scheme was openly taught by 
Cerinthus before the publication of the Gospel of John. The authority 
is that of Irenzeus, a bishop who lived in the second century, who in his 
youth had heard Polycarp, the disciple of the Apostle John, and who 
retained the discourses of Polycarp in his memory till hisdeath. There 
are yet extant of the works of Irenzeus, five books which he wrote against 
heresies, one of the most authentic and valuable monuments of theo- 
logical erudition. In one place of that work he says, that Cerinthus 
taught in Asia that the world was not made by the supreme God, but 
by a certain power very separate and far removed from the Sovereign 
«f the universe, and ignorant of his nature. (Jren. contra Haer. lib. iii, 
vap. xi, 1.) In another place he says, that John the apostle wished, by 
his Gospel, to extirpate the error which had been spread among men by 
Cerinthus ; (Jren. contra Haer. lib. i, xxvi, 1;) and Jerome, who lived 
in the fourth century, says that John wrote his Gospel at the desire of the 
bishops of Asia, against Cerinthus and other heretics, and chiefly against 
the doctrines of the Ebionites, then springing up, who said, that Christ 
did not exist before he was born of Mary. (Jerom. De Vit. Illust. cap. ix.) 


57 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


“From the laying these accounts together, it appears to have been 
the tradition of the Christian Church, that John, who lived to a great 
age, and who resided at Ephesus, in proconsular Asia, was moved by 
the growth of the Gnostic heresies, and by the solicitations of the Chris. 
tian teachers, to bear his testimony to the truth in writing, and particu. 
larly to recollect those discourses and actions of our Lord, which might 
furnish the clearest refutation of the persons who denied his pre-exist- 
ence. ‘his tradition isa key to a great part of his Gospel. Matthew, 
Mark, and Luke, had given a detail of those actions of Jesus which are 
the evidences of his Divine mission; of those events in his life upon 
earth which are most interesting to the human race; and of those 
moral discourses in which the wisdom, the grace, and the sanctity of 
the Teacher, shine with united lustre. Their whole narration implies 
that Jesus was more than man. But as it is distinguished by a beauti- 
ful simplicity, which adds very much to their credit as historians, they 
have not, with the exception of a few incidental expressions, formally 
stated the conclusion that Jesus was more than man, but have left the 
Christian world to draw it for themselves from the facts narrated, or to 
receive it by the teaching and the writings of the apostles. ohn, who 
was preserved by God to see this conclusion, which had been drawn by 
the great, body of Christians, and had been established in the epistles, 
denied by different heretics, brings forward, in the form of a history of 
Jesus, a view of his exalted character, and draws our attention particu. 
larly to the truth of that which had been denied. When you come to 
analyze the Gospel of John, you will find that the first eighteen verses 
contain the positions laid down by the apostle, in order to meet the errors 
of Cerinthus; that these positions, which are merely affirmed in the 
introduction, are proved in the progress of the Gospel, by the testimony 
of John the Baptist, and by the words and the actions of our Lord; and 
that after the proof is concluded by the declaration of Thomas, who, 
upon being convinced that Jesus had risen, said to him, ‘My Lord, and 
my God,’ John sums up the amount of his Gospel in these few words: 
‘These are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the 
Son of God,’ i. e. that Jesus and the Christ are not distinct persons, and 
that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. The apostle does not condescend 
to mention the name of Cerinthus, because that would have preserved, 
as long as the world lasts, the memory of a name which might otherwise 
be forgotten. But although there is dignity and propriety in omitting 
the mention of his name, it was necessary, in laying down the positions 
that were to meet his errors, to adopt some of his words, because the 
Christians of those days would not so readily have applied the doctrine 
of the apostle to the refutation of those heresies which Cerinthus was 
spreading among them, if they had not found in the exposition of that 
doctrine some of the terms in which the heresy was delivered: and age 


SECOND. } THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES, 574 


the chief of these terms, Logos, which Cerinthus applied to an inferior 
spirit, was equivalent to a phrase in common use among the Jews, ‘ the 
Word of Jehovah,’ and was probably borrowed from thence, John by 
nis use of Logos, rescues it from the degraded use of Cerinthus, and 
restores it to a sense corresponding to the dignity of a Jewish phrase.” 
(Hill's Lectures.) 

The Logos was no fanciful term, merely invented by St. John, pro re 
nata, oy even suggested by the Holy Spirit, as a suitable title for a pro- 
phet, by whom God chose to reveal himself or his Word. It was a 
term diversely understood in the world before St. John began his Gos- 
pel. Is it possible, therefore, that he should have used the term without 
some express allusion to these prevailing opinions? Had hecontradicted 
them all, 1t would, of course, have been a plain proof that they were all 
equally fabulous and fanciful; but by adopting the term, he certainly 
meant to show that the error did not consist in believing that there was 
a Logos, or Word of God, but in thinking amiss of it. We might, 
deed, have wondered much had he decidedly adopted the Platonic or 
“nostic notions, in preference to the Jewish ; but that he should har- 
monize with the latter is by no means surprising; first, because he was 
i Jew himself; and secondly, because Christianity was plainly to be 
shown to be connected with, and, as it were, regularly to have sprung 
mut of Judaism. It is certainly, then, in the highest degree consistent 
with all we could reasonably expect, to find St. John and others of the 
sacred writers expressing themselves in terms not only familiar to the 
Jews under the old covenant, but which might tend, by a perfect reve- 
lation of the truth, to give instruction to all parties; correcting the errors 
of the Platonic and oriental systems, and confirming, in the clearest 
manner, the hopes and expectations of the Jews. (See Nare’s Remarks 
on the Socinian Version.) 

While the reasons for the use of this term by St. John are obvious, 
the argument from it is irresistible ; for, first, the Logos of the evangelist 
is a PERSON, not an attribute, as many Socinians have said, who have, 
therefore, sometimes chosen to render it “ wisdom.” For ifan attribute, 
it were a mere truism to say that it was in the beginning with God, for 
God could never be without his attributes. The apostle also declares, 
that the Logos was the Light; but that John Baptist was not the Light. 
Here is a kind of parallel supposed, and it presumes, also, that 1t was 
possible that the same character might be erroneously ascribed to both. 

“ Between person and person this may undoubtedly be the case ; but 
what species of parallel can exist between manand an attribute? Nor 
will the difficulty be obviated by suggesting, that wisdom here means 
not the attribute itself, but him whom that attribute inspired, the man 
Jesus Christ, because the name of our Saviour has not yet been meh- 
tioned; because that rule of interpretation must be inadmissible, which 
at one time would explain the term Logos by an attribute, at another by 


576 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. (PAR? 


aman, as best scits the convenience of hypothesis , and because, if it 
be, in this instance, conceived to indicate our Saviour, it must follow, 
that our Saviour created the world, (which the Unitarians will by no 
means admit,) for the Logos, who was that which John the Baptist was 
not, the true Light, is expressly declared to have made the world.” 
(Laurence’s Dissertation on the Logos.) 

Again: the Logos was made flesh, that is, became man; but in what 
possible sense could an attribute become man? The Logos is “ the only 
begotten of the Father ;” but it would be uncouth to say of any attribute, 
that it is begotten ; and,if that were passed over it would follow, from 
this notion, either that God has only one attribute, or that wisdom is not 
his only-begotten attribute. Farther, St. John uses terms decisively 
personal, as that he is Gop, not Divine as an attribute, but God person. 
ally ; not that he was in God, which would property have been said of 
an attribute, but with God, which he could only say of a person: that 
“all things were made by him ;” that he was “in the world ;” that “he 
came to hisown;” that he was “in the bosom of the Father ;” and that 
“he hath declared the Father.” The absurdity of representing the 
Logos of St. John as an attributive seems, at length, to have been per- 
ceived by the Socinians themselves, and their New Version accordingly 
regards it as a personal term. 

If the Logos is a person, then is he Divine; for, first eternity is as. 
cribed to him, “in the beginning was the Word.” The Unitarian com. 
ment is, “ from the beginning of his ministry, or the commencement of 
the Gospel dispensation ;” which makes St. John use another trifling 
truism, and solemnly tell his readers, that our Saviour, when he began 
his ministry, was in existence /—* in the beginning of his ministry the 
Word was!” It is true that apy7, the beginning, is used for the begin- . 
ning of Christ’s ministry, when he says that the apostles had been “ with 
him from the beginning ;” and it may be used for the beginning of any 
thing whatever. It is a term which must be determined in its meaning 
by the context ; (7) and the question, therefore, is how the connection 
here determines it. Almost immediately it is added, “all things were 
made by him ;” which, in a preceding chapter, has been proved to mean 
the creation of universal nature. He, then, who made all things was 
prior to all created things; HE was when they began to be, and before 
tney began to be; and, if he existed before all created things, he wis 
not himself created, ana was, therefore, eternal. (8) Secondly, he is 


(7) ** Quotiescunque fit principii mentio, significationem illius ad id de quo ac. 
commodare necesse est.” (Beza.) 

(8) ‘* Valde errant, qui <v aoyn interpretantur de initio Evangelio; haic enim 
sententie consiliurn Joannis, et sequens oratio aperte repugnat. Si vero o doyos 
1uit jam tum, quum mundus esse cepit, sequiter eum fuisse ante mundum condi 
tum; sequitur etiam eum non esse unam ex ceteris creatis rebus, que cum munde 
esse ceeperunt, sed alia natura conditione.” (Rasenmuller.) 


BECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. ’ 577 


expressly called God, in the same sense as the Father ; and thirdly, he 
ss as explicitly said to be the Creator of all things. The two last par- 
ticulars have already been largely established, and nothing need be 
added, except, as another proof that the Scriptures can only be fairly 
explained by the doctrine of a distinction of Divine persons in the God- 
head, the declaration of St. John may be adduced, that “the Word 
was with God, and the Word was God.” What hypothesis but this 
gves a single step to explain this wonderful language? Arianism, 
. which allows the pre-existence of Christ with God, accords with the 
first clause, but contradicts the second. Sabellianism, which reduces 
the personal to an official and therefore a temporal, distinction, accords 
with the second clause, but contradicts the first; for Christ, accord. 
‘ing to this theory, was not with God in the beginning, that is, in eter- 
nity. Socinianism contradicts both clauses ; for on that scheme Christ 
was neither with God “in the beginning,” nor was.he God. “The 
faith of God’s elect” agrees with both clauses, and by both it is esta- 
blished, “ The Word was with God, and the Word was Gop.” 


CHAPTER XIII. 


CHRIST POSSESSED OF DiviINE ATTRIBUTES. 


Havine considered the import of some ~f the titles applied to our 
Lord in the Scriptures, and proved that they imply Divinity, we may 
next consider the attributes which are ascribed to him in the New Tes. 
tament. If, to names and lofty titles which imply Divinity, we find added 
attributes never given to creatures, and from which all creatures are ex- 
cluded, the Deity of Christ is established beyond reasonable controversy. 
No argument can be more conclusive than this. Of the essence of 
Deity we know nothing, but that he .s a Spirit. He is made known by 
his attributes ; and it is from them ‘hat we learn, that there is an essen- 
tial distinction between him and h’s creatures, because he has attributes 
which they have not, and those which they have in common with him, 
he possesses in a degree absolutely perfect. From this it follows, that 
HIs isa peculiar nature, a nature sui generis, to which no creature dces 
or can possibly approximate. Should, then, these same attributes be 
found ascribed to Christ, as explicitly and literally as to the Father, it 
follows of necessity, that, the attributes being the same, the essence ig 
the same, and that essence the exclusive nature of the Ocorne, or “ God- 
head.” It would, indeed, follow, that if but one of the peculiar attri- 
butes of Deity were ascribed to Christ, he must possess the whole, since 
they cannot exist separately ; and whoever is possessed of one must be 

Vor. I. 37 


578 ‘THEOLOGICAL “NSTITUTES. [PART 


ronclided to be in possession of all. (9) But it is not one attribute 
only, but all the attributes of Deity which are ascribed to him; and 
not only those which are moral, and which are, therefore, capable of 
being communicated, (though those, as they are attributed to Christ 
in infinite degree and in absolute perfection, would be sufficient for the 
argument,) but those which are, on all sides, allowed to be incommu- 
nicable, and peculiar to the Godhead. 

Ererniry is ascribed to him. ‘Unto us a child is born, unto us @ 
son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his 
name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Ever. 
lasting Father, the Prince of Peace.” “Everlasting Father” 1s vari- 
ously rendered by the principal orthodox critics ; but every rendering is 
in consistency with the application of a positive eternity to the Messiah, 
of which this is allowed to be a prediction. Bishop Lowth says, “ the 
Father of the everlasting age.” Bishop Stock, “the Father of Eter- 
nity ;” 7 e. the owner of it. Dathe and Rosenmuller, “ £ternus.” 
‘The former considers it an oriental idiom, by which names of affinity, 
as father, mother, &c, are used to denote the author, or eminent pos- 
sessor of a quality or object. Rev. i, 17,18, “I am THe First and 
tHE Last, | am he that liveth and was dead ;” so also ch. ii, 8; and in 
both passages the context shows, indisputably, that it isour Lord himself 
who speaks, and applies these titles to himself. In chap. xxii, 13, also, 
Christ is the speaker, and declares himself to be “AtrHa and OmxEea, 
the Beernnine and the Enp, the First and the Last.” Now, by these 
very titles is the eternity of God declared, Isaiah xlv, 6, and xlui, 10 
‘‘T am the first, and I am the last: and beside me there is ‘no God.” 
‘“‘ Before me was there no God formed, neither shall there be after me.” 
But they are, in the book of Revelation, assumed by Christ as explicitly 
and absolutely ; and they clearly affirm, that the Being to whom they 
are applied had no beginning, and will have no end. In Rev. i, 8, after 
the declaration, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. — 
ing, saith the Lord,” it is added, “ which is, and which was, and which 
is to come, the Almighty.” Some have referred these words to the 
Father ; but certainly without reason, as the very scope of the passage 
shows. It is Christ who speaks in the first person, throughout the 
chapter, when the sublime titles of the former part of the verse are used, 
and indeed, throughout the book; and to interpret this particular clause 
of the Father would introduce a most abrupt change of persons, which, 
but for a false theory, would never have been imagined. ‘The words, 
indeed, do but express tne import of the name Jehovah, so often given 
to Christ ; and as, when the Father is spoken of, in verse 4, the same 
declaration is made concerning him which, in verse 8, our Lord makes 


(9) ‘‘ Attributa Divina arctissimo copulari vinculo, sic, ut nullum seperatim 
concipi queat, adeoque qui uno pollet, omnibus ornetur.” (Deederlein.) 


SECOND. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 579 


of himself, it follows, that if the terms “which was, and is, and is to 
tome,” are descriptive of the eternity of the Father, they are also de- 
scriptive of eternity as an attribute also of the Son. Wehavea similar 
declaration in Heb. xiii, 8, “ Jesus Christ, rmz sAME YESTERDAY, TO- 
DAY, and FOR EVER,” where eternity, and its necessary concomitant. 
immutability, are both ascribed to him. That the phrase, “ yesterday. 
to-day, and for ever,” is equivalent to eternity needs no proof; and that 
the words are not spoken of the doctrine of Christ, as the Socinians con. 
tend, appears from the context, which scarcely makes any sense upon 
this hypothesis, (See Macknight,) since a doctrine once delivered must 
remain what it was at first. This interpretation, also, gives a figurative 
sense to words which have all the character of a strictly literal declara- 
tion; and itisa farther confirmation of the literal sense, and that Christ 
is spoken of personally. that 6 avro¢ is the phrase by which the immuta- 
bility of the Son is expressed in chapter i, verse 12: “ But thou art 6 
avtoc, the same.” Peirce, in his Paraphrase, has well expressed the con- 
nection: “Considering the conclusion of their life and behaviour, imi- 
tate their faith; for the object of their faith, Jesus Christ, is the same 
now as he was then, and will be the same for ever.” A Being essen- 
tially unchangeable, and therefore eternal, is the only proper object of 
an absolute “ faith.” A similar and most solemn ascription of eternity 
and immutability occurs Heb. i, 10-12, “Thou, Lord, in the beginning 
hast laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the works of 
thine hands. They shall perish ; but thou remainest: and they all shall 
wax old as doth a garment; and as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, 
and they shall be changed; but thou art THE SAME, AND THY YEARS 
SHALL NOT FAIL.” These words are quoted from Psa. cii, which all 
acknowledge to be a lofty description of the eternity of God. They are 
here applied to Christ, and of him they affirm, that he was before the 
material universe—that it was created by him—that he has absolute 
power over it—that he shall destroy it—that he shall do this with infi- 
nite ease, as one who folds up a vesture ; and that, amid the decays and 
changes of material things, he remains the same. The immutability 
here ascribed to Christ is not, however, that of a created spirit, which 
will remain when the material universe is destroyed; for then there 
would be nothing proper to Christ in the text, nothing but in which an- 
gels and men participate with him, and the words would be deprived of 
all meaning. His immutability and duration are peculiar, and a con. 
trast is implied between his existence and that of all created things. 
‘They are dependent, he is independent ; and his necessary, and there- 
fore eternal, existence must follow. The phrase “ erERNAL LIFE,” when 
used, as it is frequently, in St. John’s Epistles, is also a clear designa- 
tion of the eternity of our Saviour. “For the rire was manifested, and 
we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that ETERNAL 


58U THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


LIFE, which was with the Father, anc was manifested unto us.” In the 
first clause, Christ is called the Life, he is then said to be “ eternal ;” 
and, that no mistake should arise, as though the apostle merely meant 
to declare that he would continue for ever, he shows, that he ascribes 
eternity to him in his pre-existent state,—“ that eternal life’ which was 
WITH THE Farner; and with him before he was “ manifested to men.” 
And eternal pre-existence could not be more unequivocally marked. 
To these essential attributes of Deity, to be without beginning and 
without change, is added that of being extended through all space. —He 
is not only eternal, but omnrpresenr. ‘Thus he declares himself to be 
at the same time in heaven and upon earth, which is assuredly a pro- 
perty of Deity alone. “No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he 
that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which ts in hea. 
ven.” The genuineness of the last clause has been attacked by a few 
critics ;. but has been fully established by Dr. Magee. (Magee on the 
Atonement.) This passage has been defended from the Socinian inter. 
pretation already, and contains an unequivocal declaration uf ubiquity. 
For “ where two or three are gathered together in my name, THERE 
AM [IN THe MiIDst oF THEM.” How futile is the Socinian comment in 
the New Version! This promise is to be “ limited to the-apostolic age.” 
But were that granted, what would the concession avail? In the apos. 
tolic age, the disciples met in the name of their Lord many times in 
the week, and in innumerable parts of the world at the same time, in 
Judea, Asia Minor, Europe, &c. He, therefore, who could be “in the 
midst of them,” whenever and wherever they assembled, must be omni. 
present. But they add, “ by a spiritual presence, a faculty of knowing 
things in places where he was not present;” “a gift,” they say, “ given 
to the apostles occasionally,” and refer to 1 Cor. v, 3. No such gift 
is, however, claimed by the apostle in that passage, who knew the affair 
in the Church of Corinth, not by any such faculty or revelation, but by 
“report,” verse 1. Nor does he say, that he was present with them, 
but judged “ as though he were present.” If, indeed, any such gift were 
occasionally given to the apostles, it would be, not a “spiritual pre- 
sence,’ as the New Version has it; but a figurative presence. No 
such figurative meaning is however hinted at in the text before us, which 
is as literal a declaration of Christ’s presence every where with his -vore 
shippers as that similar promise made by Jehovah to the Israelites: ‘In 
all places where I record my name I will come to thee, and I will bless 
thee.” At the very moment, too, of his ascension, that is, just when, 
as to his bodily presence, he was leaving his disciples, he promises stil] 
to be with them, and calls their attention to this promise by an emphatic 
particle, “ And ro [ am wirH you ALways, even unto the end of the 
world,” Matt. xxvili, 20. The Socinians render “to the end of the 
age,” that is, “the Jewish dispensation, till the destruction of Jerusa- 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 581 


Jem.” All that can be said in favour of this is, that the words may be 
so translat.d, if no regard is paid to their import. But it is certain, 
that, in several passages, “the end of the world,” 7 ovvredera Te aiwvoc, 
must be understood in its popular sense. That this is its sense here, 
appears, first, from the clause “ Lo I am with you aLways,” waca¢ rag 
nuepac, “at all times ;” secondly, because spiritual presence stands, by 
an evidently implied antithesis, opposed to bodily absence ; thirdly, 
because that presence of Christ was as necessary to his disciples after 
the destruction of Jerusalem as till that period. But even were the 
promise to be so restricted, it would still be in proof of the omnipre- 
sence of our Lord, for, if he were present with all his disciples in all 
places, “ always,” to the destruction of Jerusalem, it could only be by 
virtue of a property which would render him present to his disciples 
in all ages. The Socinian Version intimates, that the presence meant 
is the gift of miraculous powers. Let even that be allowed, though it 
is a very partial view of the promise ; then, if till the destruction of 
Jerusalem the apostles were “always,” “at all times,” able to work 
miracles, the power to enable them to effect these wonders must 
“always” and in all places have been present with them; and if that 
were not a human endowment, if a power superior to that of man 
were requisite for the performance of the miracles, and that power 
was the power of Christ, then he was really, though spiritually, pre- 
sent with them, unless the attribute of power can be separated from 
its subject, and the power of Christ be where he himself is not. This, 
however, is a low view of the import of the promise, “ Lo I am with 
you,” which, both in the Old and New Testament, signifies to be pre- 
sent with-any one, to help, comfort, and succour him. “ Evvaz wera twvoc, 
alicui adesse, juvare aliquem, curare res alicujus.”’ (Rosenmuller.) 

It is not necessary to adduce more than another passage in proof 
of a point so fully determined already by the authority of Scripture. 
After the apostle, in Col. i, 16, 17, has ascribed the creation of all 
things in heaven and earth, “ visible and invisible,” to Christ, he adds, 
“and by him all things consist.” On this passage, Raphelius cites a 
striking passage from Aristotle, De Mundo, where the same verb, ren- 
dered “ consist,” by our translators, is used in a like sense to express 
the constant dependence of all things upon their Creator for continued 
subsistence and preservation. “There is a certain ancient tradition 
cummon to all mankind, that all things subsist from and by God, and that 
no kind of being is self-sufficient, when alone, and destitute of his pre- 
serving aid.” (1) The apostle then, here, not only attributes the crea- | 
tion, but the conservation of all things to Christ ; but to preserve them 
his presence must be co-extensive with them, and thus the universe of 
matier and created spirits, heaven and earth, must be filled with his 

(1) Raphelius in loc. See also Parkhurst’s Lex. 


582 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PARI 


power and presence. “This short sentence implies that our Lord’s 
presence extends to every part of the creation; to every being and 
system in the universe; a most striking and emphatical description of 
the omnipresence of God the Son.” (Holden’s Scripture Testimonies. ) 

To these attributes of essential Divinity is added, a PERFECT KNOW- 
LeDGE of all things. ‘This cannot be the attribute of a creature, for 
though it may be difficult to say how far the knowledge of the highest 
order of intelligent creatures may be extended, yet are there two kinds 
of knowledge which God has made peculiar to himself by solemn and 
exclusive claim. The first is, the perfect knowledge of the thoughts 
and intents of the heart. “J the Lord search the heart, I try the reins,” 
Jeremiah xvii, 10. “Thou, even thou only,” says Solomon, “knowest 
the hearts of all the children of men,” 1 Kings vil, 39. This know- 
ledge is attributed to and was claimed by our Lord, and that without 
any intimation that it was in consequence of a special revelation, or 
supernatural gift, as in a few instances we see in the apostles and 
prophets, bestowed to answer a particular and temporary purpose. In 
such instances also, it is to be observed, the knowledge of the spirits 
and thoughts of men was obtained in consequence of a revelation made 
to them by Him whose prerogative it is to search the heart. In the 
case ef our Lord, it is, however, not merely said, “ And Jesus knew 
their thoughts,” that he perceived in his spirit, that they so reasoned 
among themselves; but it is referred to as an attribute or original 
faculty, and it is, therefore made use of by St. John, on one occasion, 
to explain his conduct with reference to certain of his enemies :— 
“ But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he KNEW ALL 
MEN, and needed not that any should testify of man, FoR HE KNEW 
WHAT WAS IN MAN.” After his exaltation, also, he claims the prero 
gative in the full style and majesty of the Jehovah of the Old Testa 
ment: “ And all the Churches shall know that I am he which sparcu 
RTH THE REINS AND THE HEART.” 

A striking description of the omniscience of Christ is also found in 
Heb. iv, 12, 18, if we understand it, with most of the ancients, of the 
-hypostatic Word ; to which sense, I think the scope of the passage and 
context clearly determines it. “ For the Worp or Gop is quick (living) 
und powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to 
the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow, and 
is a DISCERNER OF THE THOUGHTS AND INTENTS OF THE HEART ; neither 
is there any creature that is not MANIFEsT in his sight ; for all things are 
NAKED and oPEN to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” The 
reasons for referring this passage rather to Christ, the author of the Gos. 
pel, than to the Gospel itself, are, first, that it agrees better with the apos- 
tle’s argument. He is warning Christians against the example of ancient 
Jewish unbelief, and enforces his warning by reminding them, that th 


SECOND. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 583 


Word of God discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart. The argu- 
ment is obvious, if the personal Word is meant; not at all so, if the 
doctrine of the Gospel be supposed. Secondly, the clauses, * neither 
is there any creature that is not manifest in nts sight,” and, all “ things 
are naked and open to the eyes of HIM, with whom we have to do,” or 
“to whom we must give an account,” are undoubtedly spoken of a pei- 
son, and that person our witness and judge. Those, therefore, whc 
think that the Gospel is spoken of in verse 12, represent the apostle as 
making a transition from the Gospel to God himself in what follows. 
This, however, produces a violent break in the argument, for which no 
grammatical nor contextual reason whatever can be given; and it is 
evident that the same metaphor extends through both verses. This is 
taken from the practice of dividing and cutting asunder the bodies of 
beasts slain for sacrifice, and laying them open for inspection, lest any 
blemish or unsoundness should lurk within, and render them unfit for 
the service of God. The dividing asunder of “ the joints and marrow” 
in the 12th verse, and the being made “ naked and open to the eyes, 
in the 13th, are all parts of the same sacrificial and judicial action, to 
which, therefore, we can justly assign but one agent. The only reason 
given for the other interpretation is, that the term Locos is nowhere 
else used by St. Paul. This can weigh but little against the obvious 
sense of the passage. St. Luke, 1, 2, appears to use the term Locos 
in a personal sense, and he uses it but once; and if St. Paul uses it 
here, and not in his other epistles, this reason may be given, that in 
other epistles he writes to Jews and Gentiles united in the same 
Churches; here, to Jews alone, among whom we have seen that the 
Logos was a well known theological term. (2) 

The Socinians urge against this ascription of infinite knowledge to 
our Lord, Mark xiii, 32: “But of that day and that hour knoweth no 
man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the 
Father only.” ‘The genuineness of the clause “ neither the Son” has 
been disputed, and is not inserted by Griesbach in his text ; there is not, 
however, sufficient reason for its rejection, though certainly in the paral- 
lel passage, Matt. xxiv, 36, “ neither the Son” is not found. “ But of 
that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven; but 
my Father only.” We are then reduced to this—a number of passages 
explicitly declare that Christ knows all things; there is one which 
declares that the Son did not know “ the day and the hour” of judg- 
ment; again, there is a passage which certainly implies that even this 
period was known to Christ; for St. Paul, 1 Tim. vi, 14, speaking of 
the “ appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ” as the universal judge, im. 


(2) ‘* Non deerat peculiaris ratio, cur Filium Dei sic vocaret, cum ad Hebreeos 
ecriberet, qui eum illo nomine indigitare solebant: ut constat ex Targum, cujus 
pars hoc tempore facta est, et ex Philone aliisque Hellenistis.” (Poli Synop.) 


584 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PARY 


mediately adds, “ which in his own times xaxpore sdio.c, shall show who 
is the blessed and only potentate,” &c. The day of judgment is here 
called “his own times,” or “his own seasons,” which, in its obvious 
sense, means the season he has himself fixed, since a certain manifesta. 
tion of himself is in its fulness reserved by him to that period, As 
“the times and the seasons,” also are said, in another place, to be in 
the Father’s “own power ;”” so by an equivalent phrase, they are here 
said to be in the power of the Son, because they are “his own times.” 
Doubtless, then, he knew “the day and the hour of judgment.” (3) 
Now, certainly, no such glaring and direct contradiction can exist in 
the word of truth, as that our Lord should know the day of judgment, 
and, at the same time, and in the same sense, not know it. Either, 
therefore, the passage in Mark must admit of an interpretation which 
will make it consistent with other passages which clearly affirm our 
Lord’s knowledge of all things, and consequently of this great day, or 
these passages must submit to such an interpretation as will bring them 
into accordance with that in Mark. It cannot, however, be in the 
nature of things that texts, which clearly predicate an infinite know- 
ledge, should be interpreted to mean a finite and partial knowledge, 
and this attempt would only establish a contradiction between the text 
and the comment. ‘Their interpretation is imperative upon us; but 
the text in Mark is capable of an interpretation which involves no con- 
tradiction or absurdity whatever, and which makes it accord with the 
rest of the Scripture testimony on this subject. This may be done two 
ways. ‘The first is adopted by Macknight. 

“The word o.dev here seems to have the force of the Hebrew con- 
junction, hiphil, which in verbs denoting action, makes that action, 
whatever it is, pass to another. Wherefore eidew, which properly signi- 
fies, I know, used in the sense of the conjunction hiphil, signifies, 1 
make another to know, I declare. ‘The word has this meaning, without 
dispute, 1 Cor. ii, 2. ‘I determined, edeva:, to know nothing among 
you, but Jesus Christ and him crucified ;’ 7. e. I determined to make 
known, to preach nothing, but Jesus Christ. So, likewise, in the text, 
‘But of that day and that hour, none maketh you to know,’ none hath 
power to make you know it; just as the phrase, Matt. xx, 23, ‘is not 
mine to give,’ signifies, ‘is not in my power to give :’7—no, uot the 
angels, neither the Son, but the Father.’ Neither man nor angel, nor 
even the Son himself, can reveal the day and hour of the destruction 
of Jerusalem to you: because the Father hath determined that it should 
not be revealed.” (Harmony.) 

The second is the usual manner of meeting the difficulty, and refers 
the words “neither the Son” exclusively to the human nature of our 


(3) Karpors cdiots, tempore, quod ipse novit. Erat itaque tempus adventus Christ 
ignotum Apostolis.” (Rosenmuller.) 


ECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 585 


f{.ord, which we know, as to the body, “ grew in stature,” and as to the 
mind, in “wisdom.” Bishop Kidder, in answering the Socinian objec- 
tion from the lips of a Jew, observes,— 

“1. That we Christians do believe, not only that Curist was Gop, 
sut also that he was perfect man, of a reasonable soul, and human flesh 
subsisting. 

“We do believe, that his body was like one of ours: a real, not a 
fantastic and imaginary one. 

“We do also believe, that he had a human soul, of the same nature 
and kind with one of ours ; though it was free from sin, and all original 
stain and corruption. And no wonder then, that we read of him, that 
he increased, not only in stature, and in favour with Gop and man, but 
in wisdom also: Luke 11,52. Now wisdomis a spiritual endowment, 
and belongs to the mind or soul. He could not be said to increase in 
wisdom as he was Gop; nor could this be said of him with respect to 
his body, for that is not the subject of wisdom; but with regard to the 
human soul of Curist, the other part of our human nature. 

«2. It must be granted, that as man he did not know beyond the 
capacities of human and finite understanding ; and not what he knew as 
Gop. He could not be supposed to know in this respect things not 
knowable by man, any otherwise than as the Divine nature and wisdom 
thought fit to communicate and impart such knowledge to him. 

«3. That therefore Curist may be said, with respect to his human 
nature and finite understanding, not to know the precise time, the day 
and hour of some future events. 

«4, ’Tis farther to be considered how the evangelists report this 
matter; they do it in such terms as are very observable. Of that day 
and hour knoweth no man; it follows, neither the Son. He doth not 
say the Son of Gop, nor the doyoc, or Word, but the Son only. 

«IT do not know all this while, where there is any inconsistency in 
the faith of Christians ; [arising from this view ;] when we believe that 
Jesus was in all things made like unto us, and in some respect a little 
lower than the angels, Heb. 11, 7,17. I see no foree in the above- 
named objection.” (Demonstration of Messiah.) 

The “Son of man,” it is true, is here placed above the angels; but, 
as Waterland observey, “ the particular concern the Son of man has in 
the last judgment is sufficient to account for the supposed climax or 
gradation. 

“It is, indeed, objected by Socinians, that these interpretations of 
Mark xiii, 32, charge our Saviour, if not with direct falsehood, at least 
with criminal evasion; since he could not say with truth and sincerity, 
that he was ignorant of the day, if he knew it in any capacity; as it 
cannot be denied that man is immortal, so long as he is, in any respect, 
immortal. ‘The answer to this is, that as it may truly be said of the 


506 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. ‘PART 


body of man, that it is not immortal, though the soul is; soit may, with 
equal truth, be said, that the Son of man was ignorant of some things, 
though the Son of God knew every thing. It is not, then, inconsistent 
with truth and sincerity for our Lord to deny that he kuew what he 
really did know in one capacity. while he was ignorant of it in an- 
other. Thus, in one place he says, ‘Now |] amno more in the world, 
John xvii, 11; and in another, ‘ Ye have the poor always with ycu, but 
me ye have not always,’ Matt. xxvi, 11; yet on another occasion, he 
says, ‘Lo I am with you always,’ Matt. xxviil, 20; and again, ‘ If any 
man love me—my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, 
and make our abode with him,’ John xiv, 28. From hence we see that 
our Lord might, without any breach of sincerity, deny that of himself, 
considered in one capacity, which he could not have denied in another. 
There was no equivocation in his denying the knowledge of ‘ that day 
and that hour,’ since, with respect to his human nature, it was most 
true; and that he designed it to refer alone to his human nature, is 
probable, because he does not say the Son of God was ignorant of that 
day, but the Son, meaning the Son of man, as appears from the con- 
text, Matthew xxiv, 37, 39; Mark xiii, 26, 34. Thus Mark xiui, 32, 
which, at first sight, may seem to favour the Unitarian hypothesis, is 
capable of a rational and unforced interpretation, consistently with the 
orthodox faith.” (Holden’s Testimonies.) 

As. the knowledge of the heart is attributed to Christ, so also is the 
knowledge of futurity, which is another quality so peculiar to Deity, 
that we find the true God distinguishing himself from all the false divi- 
nities of the heathen by this circumstance alone. “'To whom will ye 
liken me, and make me equal, and compare me, that we may be like?” 
“Tam God, and there is none like me. Declaring the end from the 
beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, 
My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure,” Isa. xlvi, 5, 
9,10. All the predictions uttered by our Saviour, and which are no- 
where referred by him to inspiration, the source to which all the pro. 
phets and apostles refer their prophetic gifts, but were spoken as from 
his own prescience, are in proof of his possessing this attribute. It is 
also affirmed, John vi, 64, that “Jesus knew from the beginning wh) 
they were that believed not, and who should betray him;” and again, 
John xiii, 11, “ For Jesus knew who should betray him.” 

Thus we find the Scriptures ascribing to Jesus an existence without 
beginning, without change, without limitation, and connected, in the 
whole extent of space which it fills, with the exercise of the most per- 
fect intelligence. These are essential attributes of Deity. “Measures 
of power may be communicated ; degrees of wisdom and goodness may 
be imparted to created spirits; but our conceptions of God are con- 
founded, and we lose sight of every circumstance by which he ia cha 


GECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 58 


racterized, if such a manner of existence as we have now described be 
cominon to him and any creature.” (Hill’s Lectures.) 

To these attributes may also be added omnrvorrNcs, which is “also 
peculiar to the Godhead ; for, though power may be communicated to a 
‘reiture, yet a finite capacity must limit the communication, nor can it 
exist infinitely, ony more than wisdom, except in an infinite nature. 
(Christ is, however, styled, Rev. i, 8, “Tuer Atmicutry.” To the Jews 
he said, ‘ What things soever he [the Father] doeth, ruresr ALSO DOETH 
THE Son LIKEWISE.” Farther, he declares, that “as the Father hath 
1 [FE IN HIMSELF, so hath he given to the Son to have LIFE IN HIMSELF,” 
which is a most strongly marked distinction between himself and all 
creatures whatever. He has “life in himself,” and he has it “ as the 
Father” has it, that is, perfectly and infinitely, which sufficiently de- 
monstrates that he is of the same essence, or he could not have this 

_communion of properties with the Father. The life is, indeed, said to 
be “ given,” but this communication from the Father makes no differ- 
ence in the argument. Whether the “life” mean the same original 
and independent life, which at once entitles the Deity to the appella- 
tions “THE Livine Gop,” and “THe Farner or spirits,” or the 
bestowing of eternal life upon all believers, it amounts to the same thing. 
The “life” which is thus bestowed upon believers, the continuance and 
perfect blessedness of existence, is from Christ as its fountain, and he 
has it as the Father himself hath it. By his eternal generation it 
was derived from the Father to him, and he possesses it equaiiy with 
the Father; by the appointment of his Father he is made the source 
of eternal life to believers, as having that LIFE IN HIMSELF to bestow, 
and to supply for ever. 

We may sum up the whole Scriptural argument, from Divine attri- 
butes being ascribed by the disciples to our Saviour, and claimed by 
himself, with his own remarkable declaration, “ ALL THINGs which the 
Father hath are ming,” John xvi, 15. “ Here he challenges to himself 
the incommunicable attributes, and, consequently, that essence which 
is inseparable from them.” (Whitby.) “If God the Son hath all 
things that the Father hath, then hath he all the attributes and perfec. 
tions belonging to the Father, the same power, rights, and privileges, 
the same honour and glory ; and, in a word, the same nature, substance, 


and Godhead.” ( Waterland.) 


hie 


588 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. | PART 


CHAPTER XIV. 


Tue ACTS ASCRIBED TO Curist Proors oF unis DIVINITY. 


Tus argument is in confirmation of the foregoing ; for, if not mly 
the proper naines of God, his majestic and peculiar titles, and his attri- 
butes, are attributed to our Lord; but if also acts have been done by 
him which, in the nature of things, cannot be performed by any crea- 
ture, however exalted, then he by whom they were done must be truly 
Gop. 

The first act of this kind is creation—the creation of all things. It is 
not here necessary to enter into any argument to prove that creation, in 
its proper sense, that is, the production of things out of nothing, is pos- 
sible only to Divine power. The Socinians themselves acknowledge 
this; and, therefore, employ their perverting, but feeble criticisms in a 
vain attempt to prove, that the creation, of which Christ, in the New 
Testament, is said to be the author, is to be understood of a moral 
creation, or of the regulation of all things in the evangelic dispensation. 
I shall not adduce many passages to prove that a proper creation is 
ascribed to our Lord; for they are sufficiently in the recollection of the 
reader. It is enough that two or three of them only be exhibited, which 
cannot be taken, without manifest absurdity, in any other sense but as 
attributing the whole physical creation to him. 

The ascription of the creation of “all things,” in the physical sense, 
to the Divine Word, in the introduction to St. John’s Gospel, has been 
vindicated against the Socinian interpretation in a preceding page. [| 
shall only farther remark upon it, first, that if St. John had intended a 
moral, and not a physical creation, he could not have expressed himself 
as he does without intending to mislead ; a supposition equally contrary 
to his inspiration and to his piety. He affirms that “ all things,” and that 
without limitation or restriction, “ were made by him ;” that “ without 
him was not any thing made that was made ;” which clearly means, 
that there is no created object which had not Christ for its Creator; an 
assertion which contains a revelation of a most important and funda. 
mental doctrine. If, however, it be taken in the Socinian sense, it is a 
pitiful truism, asserting that Christ did nothing in establishing his religion 
which he did not do: for to this effect their Version itself expresses it,--- 
“all things were done by him, and without him was not any thing done 
that hath been done ;” or, as they might have rendered it, to make the 
folly still more manifest, “ without him was not any thing done that wag 
done by him, or which he himself did.” Unfortunately, however, for 
the notion of arranging or regulating the new dispensation, the apostle 
adds a full confirmation of his former doctrine, that the physical creation 


SECOND., . TIIEOL.OGICAL INSTITUTES. | 589 


was the result of the power of the Divine Word, by asserting, that 
“ THE WORLD WAS MADE by him;” (4) that world into which he came 
as “the light,” that world in which he was when he was made flesh ; 
that world which “ knew him not.” It matters nothing to the argument, 
wh :ther “the world” be understood of men or of the material world ; 
on either supposition it was made by him, and the creation was, there. 
fore, physical. In neither case could the creation be a moral one, for 
the material world is incapable of a moral renewal; and the world 
which “knew not” Christ, if understood of men, was not renewed, but 
unregenerated; or he would have been “ known,” that is, acknowledgea 
by them. 

Another passage, equally incapable of being referred to any but a 
physical creation, is found in Heb. 1, 2, “ By whom also he MapE THE 
woRLps.” “God,” says the apostle, “hath in these last days spoken 
unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things ;” and 
then he proceeds to give farther information of the nature and dignity 
of the personage thus denominated “Son” and “HEIR ;” and his very 
first declaration concerning him, in this exposition of his character, in 
order to prove him greater than angels, who are the greatest of all 
created beings, is that “by him also God made the worlds.” Two 
methods have been resorted to, in order to ward off the force of this 
decisive testimony as to the Deity of Christ, grounded upon his creative 
acts. The first is, to render the words, “ ror whom he made the 
worlds ;” thus referring creation immediately to the Father, and making 
the preposition dca, with a genitive case, signify the final cause, the 
reason or end, for which “ the worlds” were created. Were this even 
allowed, it would be a strange doctrine to assert, that For a mere man, 
ror the exercise of the ministry of a mere man, as Christ is taken to 
be upon the Socinian hypothesis, “ the worlds,” the whole visible crea- 
tion, with its various orders of intellectual beings, were created. ‘This 
is a position almost as much opposed to that corrupt hypothesis as is 
the orthodox doctrine itself, and is another instance in proof that diffi- 
culties are multiplied, rather than lessened, by departing from the 
obvious sense of Scripture. But no example is found, in the whole 
New Testament, of the use of da with a genitive to express the final 
cause; and,in the very next verse, St. Paul uses the same construction 
to express the efficient cause,—“ when he had by himself purged our 
sin3.” This interpretation,” says Whitby, justly, “is contrary to the 
rule of all grammarians; contrary to the exposition of all the Greek 
fathers, and also without example in the New Testament.” 

The second resource, therefore, is to understand “ the worlds,” rove 
awwvac, in the literal import of the phrase, for “the ages,” or the Gospel 


(4) **The world was enlightened by him,” says the New Version ; which per. 
fectly gratuitous rendering has been before adverted to, 


890 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. PART 


dispensation. But “6c awvec, absolutely put, doth never signify the 
Church, or evangelical state; nor doth the Scripture ever speak of the 
world to come in the plural, but in the singular number only.” ( Whitby.) 
The phrase 6: awvee was adopted either as equivalent te the Jewish 
division of the whole creation into three parts, this lower world, the 
region of the stars, and the third heaven, the residence of God an¢ his, 
angels ; or as expressive of the duration of the world, extending through 
an idefinite number of ages, and standing opposed to the short life of 
its inhabitants. Acov primo longum tempus, postea eternitatem, apud 
Scriptores N. T. vero «oozov mundum significat, ex Hebraismo, ubi 
Dy et ony de mundo accipitur, quia mundus post tot generationes 
hominum perpetuo durat. (Rosenmuller.) The apostle, in writing to the 
Hebrews, used, therefore, a mode of expression which was not only 
familiar to them; but which they could not but understand of the natural 
creation. ‘This, however, is put out of all doubt by the use of the same 
phrase in the 11th chapter—“through faith we understand that the 
WORLDs were framed by the word of God, so that things which are 
seen were not made of things that do appear ;” words which can only 
be understood of the physical creation. Another consideration, which 
takes the declaration, “ by whom also he made the worlds,” out of the 
reach of all the captious and puerile criticism on which we have 
remarked, is, that, in the close of the chapter, the apostle reiterates the 
doctrine of the creation of the world by Jesus Christ: “ But unto THE 
Son he saith,” not only, “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever ;” 
but, “Thou, Lord, (Jehovah,) in the beginning hast laid the foundation 
of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands :” words 
to'which the perverted adroitness of heretics has been able to affix no 
meaning, when taken in any other sense than as addressed To Christ , 
and which will for ever attach to him, on the authority of inspiration, 
the title of “Jehovah,” and array him in all the majesty of creative 
power and glory. It is, indeed, a very conclusive argument in favour 
of the three great points of Christian doctrine, as comprehended in the 
orthodox faith, that it is impossible to interpret this celebrated chapter, 
according to any fair rule of natural and customary interpretation, with- 
out admitting that Christ is Gop, the Divine Son or Gop, and the 
Mepraror. ‘The last is indicated by his being the medium through 
whom, in these last days, the will of God is communicated to mankind, 
“God hath spoken” by him; and by his being “anointed” priest and 
king “above his fellows.” The second is expressed both by his title, 
“THe Son,” and by the superiority which, in virtue of that name, he 
has above angels, and the worship which, as the Son, they are enjoined 
to pay to him. He is ulso called Gop, and this term is fixed in its 
highest import, by his being declared “the brightness of the Father’s 
glory, and the express image of his person,” and by the creative a: ts 


&ECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. . 591 


which are ascribed to him; while his character of Scn, as being or the 
Father, is still preserved by the two metaphors of “brightness” and 
“image,” and by the expression, “ God, even thy God.” On these prin- 
ciples only is the apostle intelligible ; on any other, the whole chapter is 
incapable of consistent exposition 

The only additional passage which it is necessary to produce, in 
order to show that Christ is the Creator of all things, and that the 
creation of which he is the author, is not a moral but a physical crea- 
tion ; not the framing of the Christian dispensation, but the forming of 
the whole universe of creatures out of nothing, is Coloss. 1, 15-17: 
“Who is the macr of the invisible Gon, the Frrsr BoRN of every 
creature: for by him were all things crearep, that are in heaven, and 
that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or domi- 
nions, or principalities, or powers ; all things were created sy him, any 
FOR him; and he is BuFore all things, and by him all things consist.’ 
The Bea interpret this of “that great change which was intro- 
duced into the moral world, and particularly into the relative situation 
of Jews and Gentiles, by the dispensation of the Gospel.” (Improvea 
Version.) But, 

1. The apostle introduces this passage as a reason why we have 
“redemption through his blood ;” ver. 14; why, in other words, the 
death of Christ was efficacious, and obviously attributes this efficacy to 
the dignity of his nature. This is the scope of his argument. 2. He, 
therefore, affirms him to be “the image” (emuv,) the exact representa- 
tion or resemblance of the invisible God; which, when compared with 
Heb. i, 2, “ who being the brightness of his glory, and the express 
image of his person,” shows that the apostle uses the word in a sense 
in which it is not applicable to any human or angelic being,—“ the first 
born of every creature ;” or, more literally, “the first born of the whole 
creation.” The Arians have taken this in the sense of the _first-made ° 
creature ; but this is refuted by the term itself, which is not “ first 
made,” but “ first born ;” and by the following verse, which proves him 
to be first born, ror, or BECAUSE (571) “by him were all things created.” 
As to the date of his being, he was before all created things, for they 
were created by him: as to the manner of his being, he was by gene- 
_ration not creation. The apostle does not say, that he was created the 
first of all creatures; but, that he was born before them: (Vide Wolf 
tn loc.)—a plain allusion to the generation of the Son before time began, 
and before creatures existed. Wolf has also shown, that among the 
Jews Jehovah is sometimes called the primogenitum mundi, “the first 
born of the world,” because they attributed the creation of the world to 
the Legos, the Werd of the Lord, the ostensible Jehovah of the Old 
Testament, whom certainly they never meant to include among the 
treatures ; and that they called him also the Son or Gop. It was, then, 


592 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


in perfect accordance with the theological language of the Jews them- 
selves, that the apostle calls our Lord “ the first born of the whole 
creation.” 

The Arian interpretation, which makes the first-made creature the 
Creator of the rest, is thus destroyed. The Socinian notion is as mani. 
festly absurd. If the creation here be the new dispensation, the Chris. 
tian Church, then to call Christ the first born of this creation is to make 
the apostle say that Christ was the first-made member of the Christian 
Church ; and the reason given for this is, that he made or constituted 
the Church! If by this they mean simply that he was the author of 
Christianity, we have again a puerile truism put into the lips of the 
apostle. If they mean that the apostle declares that Christ was the 
first Christian, it is difficult to conceive how this can be gravely affirmed 
as a comment on the words; if any thing else, it is impossible to dis- 
cover any connection in the argument, that is, between the proposition 
that Christ is the first born of the whole creation, and the proof of it 
which is adduced, that by him were all things created. The annotators 
on the New Version say, “It is plain from comparing this passage with 
verse 18, (where Christ is called the first born from the dead,) that 
Christ is called the first born of the whole creation, because he is the 
first who was raised from the dead to an immortal life.” This is far 
from being “ plain ;” but it is plain that, in these two verses, the apostle 
speaks of Christ in two different states, first, in his state “before all 
things,” and as the sustainer of all things; and, then, in his state in 
“the Church,” verse 18, in which is added to the former particulars 
respecting him,—that “ he is the head of the body, the Church, who is 
the beginning, the first born from the dead.”” Again, if in verses 15, 
16, 17, the apostle is speaking of what Christ is in and to the Church, 
under the figure of a creation of all things in heaven and in earth, when 
he drops the figure and teaches us that Christ is the head of the Church, 
the first born from the dead, he uses a mere tautology ; nor is there any 
apparent reason why he should not, in the same plain terms, have stated 
his proposition at once, without resorting to expressions which, in this 
view, would be far-fetched and delusive. In “the Church” he was 
“head,” and “the first born from the dead,” the only one who ever 
rose to die no more, and who gives an immortal life to those he quick:. 
ens; but before the Church existed, or he himself became incarnate, 
“before all things,” says the apostle, he was the “first born of the whole 
creation,” that is, as the fathers understood it, he was born or begotten 
befure every creature. But the very terms of the text are an abundant 
refutation of the notion, “ that the creation here mentioned is not the 
creation of natural substances,” ‘The things created are said to be “all 
th.ugs in heaven and upon the earth ;” and, lest the invisible spirits in 
the heaven should be thought to be excluded, the apostle adds “things 


SECOND. j | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. | 59% 


visible and things invisible ;” and, lest the invisible things should be 
understood of inferior angels or spiritual beings, and the high and glo. 
rious beings, who “excel in strength,” and are, in Scripture, invested 
with other elevated properties, should be suspected to be exceptions, the 
apostle becomes still more particular, and adds, whether “ thrones, or 
dominions, or principalities, or powers,” terms by which the Jews ex. 
pressed the different orders of angels, and which are used in that sense 
by this apostle, Ephesians i, 21. It is a shameless criticism of the 
. authors of the New Version, and shows how hardly they were pushed 
by this decisive passage, that “the apostle does not here specify things 
themselves, namely, celestial and terrestrial substances, but merely 
states of things, namely, thrones, dominions, &c, which are only ranks 
and orders of beings in the rational and moral world.” Was it, then, 
forgotten, that before St. Paul speaks of things in rank and order, he 
speaks of all things collectively which are in heaven and in earth, visible 
and invisible? Ifso, he then, unquestionably, speaks of “ things them- 
selves,” or he speaks of nothing. Nor is it true, that, in the enumera- 
tion of thrones, dominions, &c, he speaks of the creation of ranks and 
orders. He does not speak “merely of states of things, but of things in 
states ; he does not say that Christ created thrones, and dominions, and 
principalities, and powers, which would have been more to their pur- 
pose, but that he created all things, ‘whether’ ere, ‘they be thrones,’ 
&c.” The apostle adds, that all things were created by him, and For 
him, as the end; which could not be said of Christ, even if a moral 
creation were intended, since, on the Socinian hypothesis that he is a 
mere man, a prophet of God, he is but the instrument of restoring man 
to obedience and subjection, for the glory and in accomplishment of the 
purposes of God. But how is the whole of this description to be made 
applicable to a figurative creation, to the moral restoration of lapsed 
beings? It is as plainly historical as the words of Moses, “In the be- 
ginning God created the heavens and the earth.” “Things visible” and 
“things on earth” comprise, of course, all those objects which, being 
neither sensible nor rational, are incapable of moral regeneration, while 
“things in heaven” and “ things invisible” comprise the angels which 
never sinned and who need no repentance and no renewal. Such are 
those gross perversions of the word of God which this heresy induces, 
and with such indelible evidence is the Divinity of our Lord declared 
by his acts of power and glory, as the Universat Crearor. The 
admirable observations of Bishop Pearson may, properly, conclude 
what has been said on this important passage of inspired writ. 

“In these words our Saviour is expressly styled the ‘first born of 
every creature,’ that is, begotten by God, as ‘the Son of his love,’ 
antecedently to all other emanations, before any thing proceeded from 


him, or was framed and created by him. And that precedency is pre 
Vo. | 38 


594 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. {PART 


sently proved by this undeniable argument, that all other emanations or 
productions come from him, and whatsoever received its being by crea 
tion was by him created, which assertion is delivered in the most 
proper, full, and frequent expressions imaginable: First, in the plain 
language of Moses, as most consonant to his description: ‘for by him 
were all things created that are in heaven, and that are in earth;’ sig- 
nifying thereby that he speaketh of the same creation. Secondly, by a 
division which Moses never used, as describing the production only of 
corporeal substances: lest, therefore, those immaterial beings might 
seem exempted from the Son’s creation, because omitted in Moses’s 
description, he addeth ‘visible and invisible ;’ and lest in that invisible 
world, among the many degrees of celestial hierarchy, any order might 
seem exempted from an essential dependence on him, he nameth those 
which are of greatest eminence, ‘ whether they be thrones, or doniinions, 
or principalities, or powers,’ and under them comprehendeth all the 
rest. Nor doth it yet suffice, thus to extend the object of his power, by 
asserting all things to be made by him, except it be so understood as to 
acknowledge the sovereignty of his person, and the authority of his 
action. For lest we should conceive the Son of God framing the world 
as a mere instrumental cause which worketh by and for another, he 
showeth him as well the final as the efficient cause; for. ‘all things 
were created by him and for him.’ Lastly, whereas all things first 
receive their being by creation, and when they have received it, continue 
in the same by virtue of God’s conservation, ‘in whom we live and 
move and have our being ;’ lest in any thing we should not depend 
immediately upon the Son of God, he is described as the conserver, as 
well as the Creator, for ‘ He is before all things, and by him all things 
consist.’ If then we consider these two latter verses by themselves, 
we cannot deny but they are a most complete description of the Crea. 
tor of the world; and if they were spoken of God the Father, could 
be no way injurious to his majesty, who is nowhere more plainly, of 
fully set forth unto us as the Maker of the world.” 

But our Lord himself professes to do other acts, beside the great act 
of creating, which are peculiar to God; and such acts are also attri- 
buted to him by his inspired apostles. His preserving of all things 
made by him has already been mentioned, and which implies not only 
a Divine power, but also ubiquity, since he must be present to all things, 
in order to their constant conservation. The final destruction of the 
whole frame of material nature is also as expressly attributed to him as 
its creation. “Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation 
of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thine hands; these shall 
perish, but thou remainest, and as a vesture SHALT THOU FOLD THEM 
up, and they shall be changed.” Here omnipotent power is seen 
“ changing,” and removing, and taking away the vast universe of mate- 


SECUND.| THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 995 


rial tninys with the same ease as it was spoken into being and at first 
disposed into order. Generally, too, our Lord claims to perform the 
works of his Father. “If I do not the works of my Father, believe 
he not; but if I po, though ye believe not me, believe the works.”— 
Should this, even, be restrained to the working of miracles, the argu- 
ment remains the same. No prophet, no apostle, ever used suck 
language in speaking of his miraculous gifts. Flere Christ declares 
that he performs the works of his Father; not merely thet the Father 
worked by him, but that he himself did the werks of God; which can 
only mean works proper or peculiar to God, and which a Divine 
power only could effect.(5) So the Jews understood him, for, upon 
this declaration, “they sought agair. to take him.” That this power of 
working miracles was in him an original power, appears also from his 
bestowing that power upon his disciples. ‘ Behold I e1ve unto you 
power to tread on serpents, and scorpions, and overall the power of 
the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you,” Luke x, 19.— 
“‘ And HE GAvE them power and authority over all devils, and to cure 
diseases,” Luke ix, 1. Their miracles were, therefore, to be performed 
in his NamE, by which the power of effecting them was expressly 
reserved to hin. ‘In my Name shall they cast out devils ;” “and His 
NAME through faith in nIs NAME hath made this man strong.” 

The manner in which our Lord promises the Holy Spirit is farther 
in proof that he performs acts peculiar to the Godhead. He speaks of 
“ sending the Spirit” in the language of one who had an original right 
and an inherent power to bestow that wondrous gift which was to 
impart miraculous energies, and heavenly wisdom, comfort, and purity 
to human minds. Does the Father send the Spirit? He claims the 
same power,—‘“ the Comforter, whom I will send unto you.” The Spirit 
is, on this account, called “the Spirit of Christ,” and “the Spirit of 
God.” Thus the giving of the Spirit is indifferently ascribed to the Son 
and to the Father; but when that gift is mediately bestowed by the 
apostles, no such language is assumed by them: they pray to Christ, 
and to the Father in his name, and he, their exalted Master, sheds forth 
the blessing—* therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and 
having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, nm hath 
shed forth this, which ye now see and hear.” 

Another of the unquestionably peculiar acts of God, is the forgiveness 
of sins. In the manifest reason of the thing, no one can forgive but the 
party offended ; and as sin is the transgression of the law of God, he, 
alone, is the offended party, and he only, therefore, can forgive.—- 


(5) «Si non facio ea ipsa divina opera, que pater meus facit; si que facio, 
non habent divine virtutis specimen.” (Rosenmuller.) ‘ Opera Patris tei. 
. @, que Patri, sive Deo, sunt propria: que a nemine alio fieri queunt.” (Pots 


Synop.) 


596 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES [PART 


Mediately, others may declare his pardoning acts, or the conditions on 
which he determines to forgive; but, authoritatively, there can be ne 
actual forgiveness of sins against Goa but by God himself. But Christ 
forgives sin authoritatively, and he is, therefore, God. One passage is 
all that is necessary to prove this. “He said to the sick of the palsy, 
Son, be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee.” The scribes, whe 
were present, understood that he did this authoritatively, and assumed, 
in this case, the rights of Divinity. They therefore said, among them- 
selves, “This man blasphemeth.” What then is the conduct of our 
Lord? Does he admit that he only ministerially declared, in conse- 
quence of some revelation, that God had forgiven the sins of the para. 
lytic? On the contrary, he works a miracle to prove to them, that the 
very right which they disputed was vested in him, that he had this 
authority—* but that ye may KNow that the Son of man hath powER 
on earth to forgive sins, then saith he to the. sick of the palsy, Arise, 
take up thy bed, and go into thine own house.” 

Such were the acts performed by our Saviour, in the days of his 
sojourn on earth, and which he is represented, by his inspired apostles, 
to be still constantly performing, or as having the power to perform.— 
If any creature is capable of doing the same mighty works, then 
is al] distinction between created, finite natures, and the uncreated 
Infinite destroyed. If such a distinction, in fact, exists; if neither 
creation, preservation, nor salvation be possible to a mere creature, 
we have seen that they are possible to Christ, because he actually 
creates, preserves, and saves; and the inevitable conclusion is, THAT 
HE Is VERY Gop. 


—— 


CHAPTER XV. 
Divine Worsuir PAIp To CHRIsT. 


From Christ’s own acts we may pass to those of his disciples 
and particularly to one which unequivocally marks their opinion 
respecting his Divinity: they worsure him as a Divine person, and 
they enjoin this also upon Christians to the end of time. If Christ, 
therefore, is not God, the apostles were idolaters, and Christianity is a 
system of impiety. This is a point so important as to demand a close 
investigation. 

The fact that Divine worship was paid to Christ by his disciples 
must be first established. Instances of falling down at the feet of Jesus 
and worshipping him are so frequent in the Gospel, that it is not neces. 
sary to select the instances which are so familiar ; and though we allow 
that the word zpockvvey is sometimes used to express that lowly reve- 
rence with which, in the east, it has been always customary to salute 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. | 597 


versons considered as greatly superior, and especially rulers and sove. 
reigns, it is yet the same word which, in a great number of instances, 
is used to express the worship of the supreme Gop. We are, then, to 
collect the intention of the act of worship, whether designed as a token 
of profound civil respect, or of real and Divine adoration, from the cir- 
cumstances of the instances on record. When a leper comes and “wor. 
suips’ Christ, professing to believe that he had the power of healing 
diseases, and that in himself, which power he could exercise at his 
will, all which he expresses by saying, “Lord, if thou wir, thou 
CANST make me clean,” we see a Jew retaining that faith of the Juwish 
Church in its purity, which had been corrupted among so many of his 
nation, that the Messiah was to be a Divine person; and, viewing our 
Lord under that character, he regarded his miraculous powers as ori- 
ginal and personal, and so hesitated not to worship him. Here then, is 
a case in which the circumstances clearly show that the worship was 
religious and supreme. When the man who had been cured of blindness 
by Jesus, and who had defended his prophetic character before the coun- 
cil, before he knew that he had a higher character than that of a prophet, 
was met in private by Jesus, and instructed in the additional fact, that 
he was “ rHE Son oF Gop,” he worshipped him. “Jesus heard, that 
they had cast him out, and when he had found him, he said unto him, 
Dost thou believe on the Son of God? He answered and said, Who is 
he, Lord, that I might believe on him? And Jesus said unto him, 
Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee. And he 
said, Lord, I believe, and he worsurprep him :”—worshipped him, be 
it observed, under his character, “ Son of God,” a title which, we have 
already seen, was regarded by the Jews as implying actual Divinity, 
and which the man understood to raise Jesus far above the rank of a 
mere prophet. The worship paid by this man must, therefore, in its 
intention, have been supreme, for it was offered to an acknowledged 
Divine person, the Son of God. When the disciples, fully yielding to 
the demonstration of our Lord’s Messiahship, arising out of a series of 
splendid miracles, recognized him also under his personal character, 
“they came and worshipped him, saying, Of a truth thou art the Son 
of Gop!” Matt. xiv, 33. When Peter, upon the miraculous draught of 
fishes, “fell at his feet,” and said, “ Depart from me, for I am a sinful 
man, O Lord,” th.se expressions themselves mark as strongly the awe 
and apprehension which is produced in the breast of a sinful man, when 
he feels himself in the presence of Divinity itself, as when Isaiah 
exclaims, in his vision of the Divine glory, “ Wo is me, for I am undone, 
for I am a man of unclean lips, and dwell among a people of unclean 
lips, for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” : 
The circumstances then, which accompany these instances make it 
evident, that the worship here paid to our Lord was of the highest 


508 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. | [PART 


order; and they will serve to explain several other cases in the Gos. 
nels, similar in the act, though not accompanied with illustrative circum. 
stances so explicit. But there is one general consideration of import- 
ance which applies to them all. Such acts of lowly prostration as are 
called worship were chiefly pid to civi) governors. Now our Lord 
eentidusly avoided yiving the least sanction to the notion that he had 
any civil pretensions, and that his object was to make himself king. It 
would, therefore, have been a marked inconsistency to suffer himself te 
be saluted with the homage and prostration proper to civil governors, 
and which, indeed, was not always in Judea, rendered to them. Ile 
did not receive this homage, then, under the character of a civil ruler 
or sovereign; and under what character could he receive it? Not in 
compliance with the haughty custom of the Jewish rabbis, who exacted 
great external reverence from their disciples, for he sharply reproved 
their haughtiness and love of adulation and, honour: not as a simple 
teacher of religion, for his apostles might then have imitated his example, 
since, upon the Socinian hypothesis of his mere manhood, they, when 
they had collected disciples and founded Churches, bad as clear a right 
to this distinction as he himself, had it only been one of appropriate and 
common courtesy sanctioned by their master. But when do we read 
of their receiving worship without spurning it on the very ground that 
“they were MEN of like passions” with others? How, then, is it to be 
accounted for, that our Lord never forbade or discouraged this pracuce 
as to himself, or even shunned it? In no other way than that he was 
conscious of his natural right to the homage thus paid; and that he 
accepted it as the expression of a favth which, though sometimes waver- 
ing, because of the obscurity which darkened the minds of his followers, 
and which even his own conduct, mysterious as it necessarily was, uti 
“he openly showed himself” after his passion, tended to produce, yet 
sometimes pierced through the cloud, and saw and acknowledged, in the 
Word made flesh, “the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full 
of grace and truth.” 3 

But to proceed with instances of worship subsequent to our Jord’s 
sesurrection and ascension : ‘ He was parted from them, and carried wp 
into heaven, and they worsurpreD him, and returned to Jerusalem with 
sreat joy,” Luke xxiv, 51,52. Here the act must necessarily have 
been one of Divine adoration, since it was performed after “‘he was 
parted from them,” and cannot be resolved into the customary token of 
personal respect paid to superiors. ‘This was always done in the pre. 
sence of the superior ; never by the Jews in his absence. 

When the apostles were assembled to fill up the place of Judas, the 
lots being prepared, they pray, ‘Thou, Lord, who knowest the hearts 
of all men, show whether of these men thou hast chosen.” That this 
prayer is addressed .o C] rist is clear, from its being his special prere - 


é 
ae 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. : 5J9. 


gative to choose his own disciples, who, therefore, styled themselves 
“apostles,” not of the Father, but “of Jesus Christ.” Here, then, is a 
direct act of worship, because an act of prayer; and our Lord is ad- 
dressed as he who “knows the hearts of all men.” Nor is this more 
that. he himself claims in the Revelation, “ And all the Churches shall 
know that [am he that searcheth the reins and the heart.” 

When Stephen, the protomartyr, was stoned, the writer of the Acts 
.{ the Apostles records two instances of prayer offered to our Lord by 
this man “full of the Holy Ghost,” and therefore, according to this 
declaration, under plenary inspiration. “Lorp Jesus! RECEIVE MY sPI- 
rit!” “LorpD, LAY NOT THIS SIN TO THEIR CHARGE!” In the former he 
acknowledges Christ to be the disposer of the eternal states of men: in 
the latter, he acknowledges him to be the governor and judge of men, 
having power to remit, pass by, or visit their sins. All these are mani- 
festly Divine acts, which sufficiently show, that St. Stephen addressed 
his prayers to Christ as Gop. The note from Lindsay, inserted in the 
Socinian version, shows the manner in which the Socinians attempt to 
evade this instance of direct prayer being offered by the apostles to 
Christ. “This address of Stephen to Jesus, when he actually saw him, 
does not authorize us to offer prayers to him now hé is invisible.” And 
this is seriously alleged! How does the circumstance of an object of 
prayer and religious worship being seen or unseen alter the case? May 
a man, when seen, be an object of prayer, to whom, unseen, it would 
he unlawful to pray? The papists, if this were true, would find a new 
refutation of their practice of invotating dead saints furnished by the 
Sociniatis. Were they alive and seen, prayer to them would be lawful ; 
but now they are invisible, it is idolatry! Even image worship would 
derive, from this casuistry, a sort of apology, as the seen image 1s, at 
least, the visible representation of the invisible saint or angel. But let 
the case be put fairly : suppose a dying person to pray to a man, visi- 
ble and near his bed, “ Lord, receive my spirit: Lord, lay not sin to the 
charge of my enemies,” who sees not that this would be gross idolatry ? 
And yet if Jesus be a mere man, the idolatry is the same, though that 
man be in heaven. It wilk not alter the case, for the Socinian to say 
that the man Jesus is exalted to great dignity and rule in the invisible 
world ; for he is, after all, on their showing, but a servant; aot a dis- 
penser of the eternal states of men, not an avenger or a passer by of 
sin, in his own right, that he should lay sin to the charge of any one, or 
not lay it, as he might be desired to do by a disciple ; and if St. Ste. 
phen had these views of him, he would not, surely, have asked of a ser. 
vant, what a servant had no power to grant. Indeed, the Socinians 
themselves give up the point, by denying that Christ is lawfully the ob. 
ect of prayer. There, however, he is prayed to, beyond all contro- 
versy, and his right and power to dispose of the disembodied spirits of 


e 


600 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. (PART 


men is as much recognized in the invocation of tl.e dying Stephen, as 
the same right and power in the Father, in the last prayer of our Lord 
himself: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” 

To Dr. Priestley’s objection, that this is an inconsiderable instance, 
and is to be regarded as a mere ejaculation, Bishop Horsley forcibly 
replies : “St. Stephen’s short ejaculatory address you had not forgot- 
ten; but you say it is very inconsiderable. But, sir, why is it incen- 
siderable? Is it because it was only an ejaculation? Ejaculations are 
often prayers of the most fervid kind ; the most expressive of self abase- 
ment and adoration. Is it for its brevity that it is inconsiderabl-” 
What, then, is the precise length of words which is requisite to make 
a prayer an act of worship? Was this petition preferred on an occa. 
sion of distress, on which a Divinity might be naturally invoked? Was 
it a petition for a succour which none but a Divinity could grant? If 
this was the case, it was surely an act of worship. Is the situation 
of the worshipper the circumstance which, in your judgment, sir, les- 
sens the authority of his example? You suppose, perhaps, some con- 
sternation of his faculties, arising from distress and fear. The history 
justifies no such supposition. It describes the utterance of the final 
prayer, as a deliberate act of one who knew his situation, and pos. 
sessed his understanding. After praying for himself, he kneels down 
to pray for his persecutors: and such was the composure with which 
he died, although the manner of his death was the most tumultuous 
and terrifying, that as if he had expired quietly upon his bed, the 
sacred historian says, that ‘he fell asleep.’ If, therefore, you would 
insinuate, that St. Stephen was not himself, when he sent forth this 
‘short ejaculatory address to Christ,’ the history refutes you. If he 
was himself, you cannot justify his prayer to Christ, while you deny 
that Christ is God, upon any principle that might not equally justify 
you or me, in praying to the blessed Stephen. If St. Stephen, in the 
full possession of his faculties, prayed to him who is no God, why da 
we reproach the Romanist, when he chaunts the litany of his saints ?” 

St. Paul, also, in that affliction, which he metaphorically describes 
by “a thorn in the flesh,” “sought the Lord thrice” that it might de. 
part from him; and the answer shows that “ the Lorn,” to whom he 
addressed his prayer, was Curist; for he adds, “and he said unto me, 
My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in 
weakness : most gladly, therefore, will I glory in my infirmities, that 
the PowER or CurisT may rest upon me ;” clearly signifying the power 
of him who had said, in answer to his prayer, “My strength, dvvap ¢, 
power, is made perfect in weakness.” 

St. Paul also prays to Christ, conjointly with the Father, in behalf of 
the Thessalonians. “Now our Lorp Jesus Curist nimsexr, and God, 
even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. | 60] 


consolation, and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts, and 
stablish you in every good work,” 2 Thess, ii, 16,17. In like manner 
ie invokes our Lord to grant his spiritual presence to Timothy: “The 
Lord Jesus be with thy spirit,” 2 Tim. iv, 22. The invoking of Christ 
is, indeed, adduced by St. Paul as a distinctive characteristic of Chris- 
tians, so that among all the primitive Churches this practice must have 
been universal. “ Unto the Church of God which is at Corinth, to them 
that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that rN 
EVERY PLACE CALL UPON THE NAME OF Jesus Curist our Lord, both 
theirs and ours,” 1 Cor. i, 2. “It appears, from the expression here 
and elsewhere used, that to invocate the name of our Lord Jesus Christ 
was a practice characterizing and distinguishing Christians from infi- 
dels.” (Dr. Benson.) Thus St. Paul is said, before his conversion, to 
have had “authority from the chief priests to bind all rHaT CALL UPON 

.-THY NAME.” The Socinian criticism is, that the phrase eixadeoar to 
ovoya may be translated either “to call on the name,” or be called by the 
name; and they, therefore, render 1 Cor. i, 2, “all that are called by 
the name of Jesus Christ.” If, however, all that can be said in favour 
of this rendering is, that the verb may be rendered passively, how is it 
that they choose to render it actively in all places, except where their 
system is to be served? This itself is suspicious. But it is not neces- 
sary to produce the refutations of this criticism given by several of their 
learned opponents, who have shown that the verb, followed by an accu- 
sative case, usually, if not constantly, is used, in its active signification, 
to call upon, to invoke. One passage is sufficient to prove both the 
active signification of the phrase, when thus applied, and also that to 
call upon the name of Christ is an act of the highest worship. “ For 
whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved,” Rom. 
x, 13. This is quoted from the Prophet Joel. St. Peter, in his ser- 
mon on the day of pentecost, makes use of it as a prophecy of Christ, 
and the argument of St. Paul imperatively requires us also to understand 
it of him. Now this prophecy proves that the phrase in question is 
used for invocation, since it is not true that whosoever shall be called by 
the name of the Lord will be saved, but those only who rightly call upon 
i; it proves also that the calling upon the name of the Lord, here 
mentivned, is a religious act, for it is calling upon the name of Jenovan, 
the word used by the Prophet Joel, the consequence of which act of 
faith and worship is salvation. «This text, indeed, presents us with # 
double argument in favour of our Lord’s Divinity. First, it applies to 
him what, by the Prophet Joel, is spoken of Jehovah ; secondly, it 
affirms him to be the object of religious adoration. Either of these 
particulars does, indeed, imply the other ; for if he be Jehovah, he must 
be the object of religious adoration; and if he be the object of reli. 
gious adoration, he must be Jehovah.” (Bishop Horne.) 


602 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. PART 


In the Revelation, too, we find St. John worshipping Christ, “ falling 
at his feet as one dead.” St. Paul also declares “that at the name of 
Jesus EVERY KNEE Shall bow,” which, in Scripture language, signifies an 
act of religious worship. “For this cause I bow my knees to the Father 
nf our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

But this homage and adoration of Christ 1s not confined to men ; it is 
practised among heavenly beings. ‘“ And again, when he bringeth in tho 
first begotten into the world, he saith, And LeT ALL THE ANGELS oF Gop 
Worsuip HIM.” For the purpose of evading the force of these words, 
the Socinians, in their version, have chosen the absurdity of rendering 
ayyédo throughout this chapter, by “ messengers,” but in the next chapter, 
as though the subject would, by that time, be out of the reader’s mind, 
they return to the common version, “angels.” Thus they make the 
“spirits and flames of fire,” or, as they render it, “‘ winds and flames of 
lightning,” to be the ancient prophets or messengers, not angels; and 
of these same prophets and messengers, who lived several thousand years 
ago, their translation affirms that they “ are sent forth to minister for them 
who shall be (in future !) heirs of salvation.” ‘The absurdity is so appa- 
rent, that it is scarcely necessary to add, that, in the New Testament, 
though “angel” is sometimes applied to men, yet “angels of God” is 
a phrase never used, but to express an order of heavenly intelligences. 

If, however, either prophets or angels were commanded to worship 
Christ, his Divinity would be equally proved, and, therefore, the note on 
this text, in the New Version teaches, that ‘‘ to worship Christ” here means 
to acknowledge him as their superior ; and urges that the text is cited 
from the LXX, Deut. xxxu, 43, “‘ where it is spoken of the Hebrew 
nation, and, therefore, cannot be understood of religious worship.” But 
whoever will turn to the LXX, will see that it is not the Hebrew nation, 
but Jehovah, who is exhibited in that passage as the object of worship ; 
and if, therefore, the text were cited from the book of Deuteronomy, and 
the genuineness of the passage in the LXX were allowed, for it is not in 
the present Hebrew text, it would only afford another proof, that, in the 
mind of the apostles, the Jehovah of the Old Testament and the Christ 
of the New are the same being, and that equal worship is due to both. 
We have, however, an unquestioned text in the Old Testament, Psalm 
xcevil, 7, from which the quotation is obviously made ; where, in the 
Hebrew, it is “ worship him, ail ye gods,” a probable ellipsis for “the 
angels of the Aleim;” for the LXX uses the word “angels.” This 
psalm the apostle, therefore, understood of Christ, and in this the old 
Jewish interpreters agree with him; (6) and though he is not mentioned 
in it by any of his usual Oid Testament titles, except that of Jehovah, it 


(6: ‘*Psalmos omnes a XCIII ad CI in se continere mvsterium Messia, dixit 
Davie Kimshi.” (Rosenmuller.) 


SECOND.) THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 603 


clearly predicts the overthrow of idolatry by the introduction of the king- 
dom of this Jehovah. It follows then, that as idolatry was not overthrown 
sy Judaism, but by the kingdom of Christ, it is Christ, as the head and 
author of this kingdom, of whom the psalmist:speaks, and whom he sees 
receiving the worship of the angels of God upon its introduction and 
estahlishment. ‘This, also, agrees with the words by which the apostle 
introduces the quotation. ‘And again, when he bringeth in the first 
begotien into the world,” the habitable world; which intimates that it 
was upon some solemn occasion, when engaged in some solemn act, 
that the angels were commanded to worship him, and this act is repre- 
sented in the ninety-seventh Psalm as the establishment of his kingdom. 
Bishop Horsley’s remarks on this psalm are equally just and beautiful. 

“'That Jehovah’s kingdom in some sense or other is the subject 
of this Divine song, cannot be made a question, for thus it opens,— 
_* Jehovah reigneth.’ ‘The psalm, therefore, must be understood, either 
of God’s natural kingdom over his whole creation; of his particular 
kingdom over the Jews, his chosen people; or of that kingdom which 
is called in the New Testament the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of 
God, or the kingdom of Christ. For of any other kingdom beside these 
three, man never heard or read. God’s peculiar kingdom over the Jews 
cannot be the subject of this psalm, because ali nations of the earth are 
called upon to rejoice in the acknowledgment of this great truth, ‘ Jeho- 
vah reigneth, let the earth rejoice; let the many isles be glad thereof.’ 
The many isles are the various regions of the habitable world. 

“The same consideration, that Jehovah’s kingdom is mentioned as a 
subject of general thanksgiving, proves that God’s universal dominion 
over his whole creation cannot be the kingdom in the prophet’s mind. 
‘For in this kingdom a great majority of the ancient world, the idola- 
ters, were considered, not as subjects who might rejoice in the glory 
of their monarch ; but as rebels who had every thing to fear from his 
just resentment. 

“It remains, therefore, that Christ’s kingdom is that kingdom of Jeho- 
vah which the inspired poet celebrates as the occasion of universal joy. 
And this will farther appear by the sequel of the song. After four verses, 
in which the transcendent glory, the irresistible power, and inscru- 
table perfection of the Lord, who to the joy of all nations reigneth, 
are painted in poetical images, taken partly from the awful scene on 
Sinai which accompanied the delivery of the law, partly from other 
manifestations of God’s presence with the Israelites in their journey 
through the wilderness, he proceeds, in the s:xth verse, ¢ The heavens 
declare his righteousness, and all the people see his glory.’ We read in the 
19th Psalm, that ‘the heavens declare the glory of God.’ And the glory 
of God, the power and the intelligence of the Creator, is indeed visibly 
declared in the fabric of the material world. But I cannot see how the 


604 THEOLOGICAL USTI'SUTES | [PART 


structure of the heavens can demonstrate the righteousness of God. 
Wisdom and power may be displayed in the contrivance of an inanimate 
machine ; but righteousness cannot appear in the arrangement of the 
parts, or the direction of the motions of lifeless matter. ‘The heavens 
therefore, in their external structure, cannot declare their Maker’s right- 
eousness. But the heavens, in another sense, attested the righteousness 
of Christ when the voice from heaven declared him the beloved Son of 
God, in whom the Father was well pleased ; and when the preternatural 
darkness of the sun at the crucifixion, and other agonies of nature, drew 
that confession from the heathen centurion who attended the execution, 
that the suffering Jesus was the Son of God ; ‘ And all the people see his 
glory.’ The word people, in the singular, for the most part denotes God’s 
chosen people, the Jewish nation, unless any other particular people 
happen to be the subject of discourse. But peoples, in the plural, is put 
for all the other races of mankind as distinct. from the chosen people. 
The word here is in the plural form, ¢ And all the peoples see his glory.’ 
But when, or in what did any of the peoples, the idolatrous nations, see 
the glory of God? Literally they never saw his glory. The effulgence 
of the Shechinah never was displayed to them, except when it blazed 
forth upon the Egyptians to strike them with a panic; or when the tower- 
ing pillar of flame, which marshalled the Israelites in the wilderness, was 
seen by the inhabitants of Palestine and Arabia as a threatening meteor 
in their sky. Intellectually no idolaters ever saw the glory of God, for 
they never acknowledged his power and Godhead: had they thus seen 
his glory, they had ceased to be idolaters. But all the peoples, by the 
preaching of the Gospel, saw the glory of Christ. They saw it literally 
in the miracles performed by his apostles ; they saw it spiritually when 
they perceived the purity of his precepts, when they acknowledged the 
truth of his doctrine, when they embraced the profession of Christianity, 
and owned Christ for their Saviour and their God. The psalmist goes 
on, ‘ Confounded be all they that serve graven images, that boast them- 
selves of idols. Worship him, all ye gods.’ In the original this verse 
has not at all the form of a malediction, which it has acquired in our 
translation from the use of the strong word confounded. <‘ Let them be 
ashamed.’ ‘This is the utmost that the psalmist says. The prayer that 
they may be ashamed of their folly and repent of it, is very different 
from an imprecation of confusion. But in truth the psalmist rather seems 
to speak prophetically, without any thing either of prayer or imprecation 
—‘ they shall be ashamed.’ Having seen the glory of Christ they shall 
be ashamed of the idols, which in the times of tgnorance they worshipped. 
In the 8th and 9th verses, looking forward to the times when the fulness 
of the Gentiles shall be come in, and the remnant of Israel shall turn to 
the Lord, he describes the daughter of Judah as rejoicing at the news 
of the mercy extended to tle Gentile world, and exulting in the univer 


KECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. : 105 


sal extent of Jehovah’s kingdom, and the general acknowledgment of 
ris Godhead.” (Nine Sermons.) 

The argument of the apostle is thus made clear; he proves Christ 
superior to angels, and therefore Divine. because angels themselves are 
commanded “to worship him.” (7) Nor is this the only prophetic 
pselm in which the religious worship of Messiah is predicted. ‘The 
72d Psalm, alone, is full of this doctrine. “They shall rear thee as 
long as the sun and moon endure.” “ All-kings shall worsurp (or, 
FALL Down’ before him; all nations shall serve him.” “ PRavER 
shall be made ever for (or, to) him, and daily shall he be pRatsEp.” 

Finally, as to the direct worship of Christ, the book of Revelation, in 
its scenic representations, exhibits him as, equally with the Father, the 
object of the worship of angels and of glorified saints; and, in chapter 
eighth, places every creature in the universe, the inhabitants of hell only 
_excepted, in prostrate adoration at his footstool. “And every creature 
which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as 
are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and 
honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, 
AND UNTO THE Lamp for ever and ever.” 

To these instances are to be added, all the poxoLocies to Christ, in 
common with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and all the BENEDICTIONS 
made in his name in common with theirs; for all these are forms of 
worship. The first consist of ascriptions of equal and Divine honours, 
with grateful recognitions of the Being addressed, as the author of bene- 
fits received; the second are a solemn blessing of others in the name 
of God, and were derived from the practice of the Jewish priests and 
the still older patriarchs, who blessed others in the name of Jehovah, as 
his representatives. 

Of the first, the following may be given as a few out of many instances : 
“The Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me 
to his heavenly kingdom: to whom be crory for ever and ever,” 2 Tim. 
iv, 18 “But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ : to him be eLory both now and for ever. Amen,” 
2 Pet. iii, 18. ‘Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins 
in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his 
Father; to him be GLory and pomrnion for ever and ever. Amen,’ 
Rev. i, 5,6. “When we consider the great difference between these 
doxol gies and the commendations but sparingly given in the Scriptures 
to mere men; the serious and reverential manner in which they are 
introduced ; and the superlative praise they convey, so far surpassing 
what humanity can deserve, we cannot but suppose that the Being to 
whom they refer is really Divine. The ascription of eternal glory and 


(7) “*Ceterum recte argumentatur apostolus: si angeli Regem illum maximum 
adorare debent ; ergo sunt illo inferiores.” (Rosenmuller in loc.) 


ANG THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


everlasting dominion, if addressed to any creature, however exalted, 
would be idolatrous and profane.” (Holden’s Testimonies.) Of benedic- 
tions the commencement and conclusion of several of the epistles furnish 
instances, so regular in their form, as to make it clearly appear, that the 
apostles and the priests of the New Testament constantly blessed the peo- 
ple ministerially in the name of Christ, as one of the blessed trinity. This 
consideration alone shows that the benedictions are not, as the Socinians 
would take them, to be cénsidered as cursory expressions of good will. 
“Grace to you, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus 
Christ.” This, with little variation, is the common form of salutation ; 
and the usual parting benediction is, “The grace of our Lord Jesus 
Christ be with you all;” or, more fully, “The grace of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with 
you all.” In answer to the Socinian perversion, that these are mere 
“wishes,” it has been well and wisely observed, that “this objection 
overlooks. or notices very slightly, the point on which the whole ques- 
tion turns, the nature of the blessings sought, and the qualities which 
they imply in the Person as whose donation they are deliberately de- 
sired. These blessings are not of that kind which one creature is com- 
petent to bestow upon another. ‘They refer to the judicial state of an 
accountable being before God, to the remission of moral offences, to the 
production and preservation of certain mental qualities which none can 
efficaciously and immediately give but He who holds the dominion of 
human minds and feelings, and to the enjoyments of supreme and end- 
less felicity. They are grace, mercy, and peace. Grace, the free 
favour of the Eternal Majesty to those who have forfeited every claim 
to it, such favour as in its own nature and in the contemplation of the 
supplicant, is the sole and effective cause of deliverance from the great- 
est evils, and acquisition of the greatest good. Mercy, the compassion 
of infinite goodness, conferring its richest bestowments of holiness and 
happiness on the ruined, miserable, and helpless. Peace, the tranquil 
and delightful feeling which results from the rational hope of possessing 
these epjor-z2:3.53 ‘These are the highest blessings that Omnipotent 
benevolence can give, or a depondert net's receive. To desire such 
blessings, either in the mode of direct address or in that of precatory 
wish, from any being who is not possessed of omnipotent goodness, 
would be, not ‘innocent and proper,’ but sinful and absurd in the highest 
degree. When, therefore, we find every apostle whose epistles are cx- 
tant, pouring out his ‘expressions of desire,’ with the utmost simplicity 
and energy, for these blessings, as proceeding from ‘our Lord Jesus 
Christ,’ equally with ‘God our Father,’ we cannot but regard it as tha 
just and necessary conc !usion that Christ and the Father are one in the 
perfection which originates the highest blessings, and in the honour due 
for the gift of those blessings.” (Smith’s Person of Christ.) 


S8ECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES C07 


So clearly does the New Testament show that supreme worship waa 
vaid to Christ, as well as to the Father; and the practice obtained as 
matter of course, as 1 matter quite undisputed in the primitive Chureh, 
and has so continued, in all orthodox Churches, to this day. ‘Thus 
heathen writers represented the first Christians as worshippers of 
Christ ; and, as for the practice of the primitive Church, it is not neces. 
sary to quote passages from the fathers, which are so well known, or so 
easily found in all books which treat on this subject. It is sufficient 
evidence of the practice, that when, in the fourth century, the Arians 
taught, that our Lord was a super angelic creature only, they departed 
not, 1 the instance of worship, from the homage paid to him in the uni. 
versal Church; but continued to adore Christ. On this ground the 
orthodox justly branded them with idolatry ; and, in order to avoid the 
force of the charge, they invented those sophistical distinctions as to 
superior and imferior worship which the papists, in later times, intro- 
duced, in order to excuse the worship of saints and angels. Even the 
old Socinians allowed Christ to be the object of religious adoration ; 
so impossible was it, even for them, to oppose themselves all at once to 
the reproving and condemning universal example of the Church of Christ 
in all ages. 

Having, then, established the fact of the worship of Christ by his 
immediate followers, whose precepts and example have, in this matter, 
been followed by all the faithful; let us consider the religious principles 
which the first disciples held, in order to determine whether they could 
have so worshipped Christ, unless his true Divinity had been, with them, 
a fundamental and universally received doctrine. They were Jews ; 
and Jews of an age in which their nation had Jong shaken off its idola- 
trous propensities, and which was distinguished by its zeal against all 
worship, or expressions of religious trust and hope being directed, not 
only to false gods, (to idols,) but to creatures. The great principle of 
the law was, “Thou shalt have no other gods before (or, beside) me.” 
It was, therefore, commanded by Moses, “ Thou shalt fear the Lord thy 
God, and him shalt thou serve ;” which words are quoted by our Lord 
in his temptation, when solicited to worship Satan, so as to prove that 
to fear God and to serve him are expressions which signify worship, and 
that all other beings but God are excluded from it. “Thou shalt wor- 
suiF the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.” The argu- 
ment, too, in the quotation, is not that Satan had no night to receive 
worship because he was an evil spirit; but that, whatever he might be, 
or whoever should make that claim, God only is to be worshipped. By 
this, also, we see that Christianity made no alteration in Judaism, as to 
the article of dectrine, for our Lord himself here adopts it as his own 
principle; he quotes it from the writings of Moses, and so transmittea 
it. on bis own authority. to his followers. Accordingly, we find the 


608 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PAR 


apostles teaching and practising this as a first principle of their religion. 
St. Paul, Rom. i, 21-25, charges the heathen with not glorifying God 
when they knew him, and worshipping and serving “ the creature more 
than (or, beside) the Creator, who is blessed for ever.” “ Wherein the 
apostle,” says Waterland, “ plainly intimates, that the Creator only is 
to be served, and that the idolatry of the heathens lay in their worship. 
ping of the creature. He does not blame them for giving sovereign 
absolute worship to creatures; they could scarcely be so silly as to 
imagine there could be more than one supreme God; but for giving 
any worship to them at all, sovereign or inferior.” (Defence of Queries.) 
Again: when he mentions it as one of the crimes of the Galatians, pre- 
vious to their conversion to Christianity, that they “did service unto 
them which by nature were no gods,” he plainly intimates, that no one 
has a title to religious service but he who is by nature God ; and, if so, 
he himself could not worship or do service to Christ, unless he believed 
him to possess a natural and essential Divinity. 

The practice of the apostles, too, was in strict accordance with this 
principle. ‘Thus, when worship was offered to St. Peter, by Cornelius, 
who certainly did not take him to be God, he forbade it: so also Paul and 
Barnabas forbade it at Lystra, with expressions of horror, when offered 
to them. An eminent instance is recorded, also, of the exclusion of all 
creatures, however exalted, from this honour, in Rey. xix, 10, where 
the angel refuses to receive so much as the outward act of adoration, 
giving this rule and maxim upon it, “ Worship Gop ;” intimating there- 
by, that God only is to be worshipped ; that all acts of religious worship 
are appropriated to God alone. He does not say, “ Worship God, and 
whom God shall appoint to be worshipped,” as if he had appointed any 
beside God; nor “ Worship God with sovereign worship,” as if any 
inferior sort of worship was permitted to be paid to creatures; but 
simply, plainly, and briefly, “ Worship Gop.” 

From the known and avowed religious sentiments, then, of the apos- 
tles, both as Jews and as Christians, as well as from their practice, 
it follows that they could not pay religious worship to Christ, a fact 
which has already been established, except they had considered him 
as a Divine person, and themselves as bound, on that account, ac- 
cording to his own words, to honour the Son, even as they honoured the 
Father. 

The Arians, it is true, as hinted above, devised the doctrine of su- 
preme and inferior worship, and a similar distinction was maintained by 
I)r. Samuel Clarke, to reconcile the worship of Christ with his semi-~ 
Arianism. The same sophistical distinctions are resorted to by Roman 
Catholics to vindicate the worship of angels, the Virgin Mary, and de- 
parted saints. ‘This distinction they express by Aarpeia and dovAea. 
St. Paul, however, and other sacred writers, and the early fathers, cer- 


SECOND.) THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. . 609 


tainly use these terms promiscuously and indifferently, so that the ar. 
gument which is founded upon them, in defence of this infericr and 
subordinate worship, falls to the ground; and, as to all these distinc. 
tions of worship into ultimate or supreme, mediate or inferior, Dr. 
Waterland has most forcibly observed,— 

1. “I can meet with nothing in Scripture to countenance those fine- 
pun notions. Prayer we often read of; but there is not a syllable 
ibout absolute and relative, supreme and inferior prayer. We are 
. commanded to pray fervently and incessantly; but never sovereignly 
»r absolutely that I know of. We have no rules left us about raising 
or lowering our intentions, in proportion to the dignity of the objects. 
Some instructions to this purpose might have been highly useful ; and 
it is very strange that, in a matter of so great importance, no direc- 
tions should be given, either in Scripture, or, at least, in antiquity, 
- how to regulate our intentions and meanings, with metaphysical exact- 
ness ; so as to make our worship either high, higher, or highest of all, 
as occasion should require. 

2. “But a greater objection against this doctrine is, that the whole 
tenor of Scripture runs counter to it. This may be understood, in part, 
from what I have observed above. To make it yet plainer, I shall take 
into consideration such acts and instances of worship, as I find laid 
down in Scripture, whether under the old or new dispensation. 

« Sacrifice was one instance of worship required under the law ; and 
it is said, ‘ He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord only, 
he shall be utterly destroved,’ Exod. xxii, 20. Now suppose any per- 
son, considering with himself that only absolute and sovereign sacrifice 
was appropriated to God, by this law, should have gone and sacrificed 
to other gods, and have been convicted of it before the judges :—the 
apology he must have made for it, I suppose, must have run thus: 
‘Gentlemen, though I have sacrificed to other gods, yet, I hope, you ’ll 
observe, that I did it not absolutely: I meant not any absolute or su- 
preme sacrifice, (which is all that the law forbids,) but relative and 
inferior only. I regulated my intentions with all imaginable care, 
and my esteem with the most critical exactness: I considered the 
other gods, whom I sacrificed to, as inferior only, and infinitely so ; re- 
serving all sovereign sacrifice to the supreme God of Israel.’ This, or 
the like apology, must, I presume, have brought off the criminal, with 
some applause for his acuteness, if your principles be true. Either 
you must allow this; or you must be content to say, that not only ab- 
solute supreme sacrifice, (if there be any sense in that phrase,) but all 
sacrifice was, by the law, appropriated to God only. 

“ Another instance of worship is, making of vows, religious vows. 
We find as little appearance of your famed distinction here, as in the 
former case. We read nothing of sovereign and inferior, absolute and 

Vot. I. 39 


610 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 'PARI 


relative vows; that we should imagine supreme vows to be appropriate 
to God, inferior permitted to angels or idols, or to any creature. 

“ Swearing is another instance much of the same kind with the 
foregoing. Swearing by God’s name is a plain thing, and well under- 
stood: but if you tell us of sovereign and inferior swearing, according 
to the inward respect or intention you have, in proportion to the dig- 
nity of the person by whose name you swear, it must sound perfectly 
new to us. All swearing which comes short in its respects, or falls 
below sovereign, will, | am afraid, be little better than profaneness. 

«“ Such being the case in respect of the acts of religious worship al- 
ready mentioned, I am now to ask you, what is there so peculiar in the 
case of invocation and adoration, that they should not be thought of the 
same kind with the other? Why should not absolute and relative prayer 
and prostration appear as absurd as absolute and relative sacrifice, vows 
oaths, or the like? ‘They are acts and instances of religious worship, 
like the other ; appropriated to God in the sanie manner, and by the 
same laws, and upon the same grounds and reasons. Well then, will 
you please to consider whether you have not begun at the wrong end, 
and committed an votepov mporepov in your way of thinking. You ima- 
gine that acts of religious worship are to derive their signification and 
quality from the intention and meaning of the worshippers; whereas the 
very reverse of it isthe truth. Their meaning and signification is fixed 
and determined by God himself; and therefore we are never to use 
them with any other meaning, under peril of profaneness or idolatry. 
God has not left us at liberty to fix what sense we please upon religious 
worship, to render it high or low, absolute or relative, at discretion, su- 
preme when offered to God, and if to others inferior: as when to an. 
gels, or saints, or images, in suitable proportion. No: religion was not 
made for metaphysical heads only ; such as might nicely distinguish the 
several degrees and elevations of respect and honour among many ob. 
jects. The short and plain way, which (in pity to human infirmity, and 
to prevent confusion,) it has pleased God to take with us, is to make all 
religious worship his own; and so it is sovereign of course. This I 
take to be the true Scriptural, as well as only reasonable account of the 
object of worship. We need not concern ourselves (it is but vain to 
pretend to it) about determining the sense and meaning of religious wor- 
ship. God himself has taken care of it; and it is already fixed and 
determined to our hands. It means, whether we will or no, it means, 
by Divine institution and appointment, the divinity, the supremacy, the 
sovereignty of its object. ‘To misapply those marks of dignity, those 
appropriate ensigns of Divine majesty; to compliment any creature 
with them, and thereby to make common what God has made proper, 
is to deify the works of God’s hands, and to serve the creature instead 
of the Creator, God blessed for ever. We have no occasion to talk of 


+ 40ND.) THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 61) 


sovereign, absolute prayers, and such other odd fancies: prayer is an 
address to God, and does not admit of those novel distinctions. In 
short then, here is no room left for your distinguishing between sove- 
reign and inferior adoration. You must first prove, what you have 
hitherto presumed only, and taken for granted, that you are at liberty 
to fix what meaning and signification you please to the acts of reli- 
gious worship; to make them high or low at discretion. This you will 
find a very difficult undertaking. Scripture is beforehand with you; 
and, to fix it more, the concurring judgment of the earliest and best 
Christian writers. All religious worship is hereby determined to be 
what you call absolute and sovereign. Inferior or relative worship 
appears now to be contradiction in sense, as it is novel in sound; like 
an inferior cr relative god.” (Defence of Queries.) 

These absurdities have, at length, been discovered by Socinians 
themselves, who, notwithstanding the authority of Socinus, have, at 
length, become, in this respect, consistent; and, as they deny the 
Divinity of our Lord, so they refuse him worship, and do nor “honour 
the Son as they honour the Father.” Their refusal to do so must be 
left to him who hain said, “ Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye 
perish from the way ;”’ but, though they have not shunned error, they 
have, at least, by refusing all worship to Christ, escaped from hypocrisy 

Numerous other passages in tie New Testament, in addition to those 
on which some remarks have been offered, might be adduced, in which 
the Divinity of our Lord is expressly taught, and which might be easily 
rescued from that discreditable and unscholarly criticism, by which 
Socinian writers have attempted to darken their evidence. It has, 
however, been my object rather to adduce passages which directly sup- 
port the arguments in the order in which they have been adduced, than 
to collect those which are more insulated. All of them ought, however, 
to be consulted by the careful student; and, indeed, from many texts of 
this description, which appear to be but incidentally introduced, the 
evidence that the doctrine of the Godhead of Christ was taught by the 
apostles, is presented to us with this impressive circumstance, that the 
inspired writers of the New Testament all along assume it as a point 
which was never, in that age, questioned by true Christians. It influ- 
enced, therefore, the turn of their language, and established a theologi- 
ral style among them when speaking of Christ, which cannot possibly 
ve reconciled to any hypothesis which excludes his essential Deity ; and 
which no honest, or even rational, men could have fallen into, unless 
they had acknowledged and worshipped their Master as Gop. 

Out of this numerous class of passages, one will suffice for illustra- 
tion. ; 

“ Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being 
m the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with Gon, but 


G12 THFOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


made himself of no reputation,” &c, Philip. ii, 5-7. Here the apostle 
is recommending an humble and benevolent disposition to the Philip. 
pians; and he enforces it, not certainly by considerations which them. 
selves needed to be established by proof, or in which the Philippians 
had not been previously instructed, but in the most natural manner, and 
that only which a good writer could adopt, by what was already esta- 
hlished, and received as true among them. It was already admitted by 
ine Philippians as an undoubted verity of the Christian religion, that 
before Christ appeared in “the form of a servant,” he existed “in the 
form of God,” and before he was “ found in fashion as a man,” he was 
such a being as could not think it “ robbery to be equal with God.” On 
these very grounds the example of Christ is proposed to his followers, 
and its imitation enforced upon them. ‘This incidental and familiar 
manner of introducing so great a subject, clearly shows that the Divi. 
nity of Christ was a received doctrine ; but, though introduced inciden. 
tally, the terms employed by the apostle are as strong and unequivocal 
as if he had undertaken formally to propose it. It is not necessary to 
show this by going through that formidable mass of verbal criticism which 
commentators, scholiasts, and other critics, have accumulated around 
this passage. Happily as to this, as well as many other important texts 
which form the bases of the great dogmata of Christianity, much less is 
left to verbal criticism than many have supposed ; the various clauses, 
together with the connection, so illustrate and guard the meaning as to 
fix their sense, and make it obvious to the general reader. “ Who be- 
ing” or “ subsisting in the form of God.” This is the first character of 
Christ’s exalted pre-existent state, and it is adduced as the ground of a 
claim which, for a season, he divested himself of, and became, there- 
fore, an illustrious example of humility and charity. The greatness of 
Christ is first laid down, then what he renounced of that which was due 
to his greatness, and finally the condition is introduced to which he 
stooped or humbled himself. “ He thought it not robbery to be EQUAL 
with God, but made himself of No REPUTATION, and took upon him the 
form of a sERvANT.” ‘These are, obviously, the three great points in 
this celebrated text, to the consideration of which we are strictly bound 
by the apostle’s argument. Let each be briefly considered, and it will 
be seen how impossible it is to explain this passage in any way which 
does not imply our Lord’s essential] Divinity. To be or to subsist in 
“the form of God,” is to be truly and essentially Gop. This may, in- 
deed, be argued from the word popdn, though some have confined its 
meaning to eaternal form or appearance. The Socinian exposition. that 
“the form of God” signifies his power of working miracles, needs no 
other refutation than that the apostle here speaks of what our Lord was 
before he took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the 
likeness of men. The notion, too, of Whitby and others, who refer it 


SECON D.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 613 


to the visible glory of God, in which he appeared to the patriarcns, is 
also disproved by this manifest consideration, that the phrase “suBsisT. 
ING (uxapyov) in the form of God,” describes the permanent pre-exist 
ent state of. Christ. He subsisted in the form of God, therefore, from 
eternity, and consequently before he made any visibly gloriou s Raat 
ations of himself to the patriarchs ; nor, as God is invisible aiid immat ;- 
rial, and consequently has no likeness of figure, could our Lord, in their 
ete “subsist” in the form or appearance of God. If, indeed, “ form’ 
means lzkeness, it must be intellectual likeness, and, therefore, to subsist 
in the form of God is to be God, for he could not be the Bagness of God, 
or, as the apostle has it in the Hebrews, the “ express image” or cha- 
racter of his person, without being God ; for how could he be expressly 
like, or expressly resemble, or have the appearance of omnipotence, if 
he were not himself almighty ; or of omniscience, if not himself all- 
knowing? Let us then allow that woppy in its leading sense has the sig- 
nification of form, shape, image, and similitude, (8) yet this can only be 
upplied to the Divine Being figuratively. He has no sensible form, no 
Appearance, and nothing can be in this form or image, therefore, but 
what has the same essential properties and perfections. “Sed age,” 
says Elsner, “ largiamur Socinianis woppyy Ses spectem et imaginem Der 
esse, timen valido inde argumento docebimus ; Deum esse natura, qui 
in forma et imagine Dei existeret ; nisi Deum personatum, et commen- 
litium, qui speciem quidem et gavragua haberet veritate carens, credere 
et adorare malint.” (Observationes Sacre in loc.) But it is nof true, as 
some have hastily stated, that woppy signifies only the outward form of 
any thing; it is used in Greek authors for the essential form, or nature 
itself of a thing, of which examples may be seen in Wetstein, Elsner, 
Rosenmuller, Schleusner, and others; and accordingly Schleusver ex- 
plains it “ per metonymiam ; ipsa natura et essentia alicujus rei,’ ” and 
adds, “sic legitur m N. T. Philip. ii, 6, ubi Christus dicitur ev opoy 
Oex vrapywv ad designandam sublimtorem ipsius naturam.” ‘The. Greek 
fathers also understuod ope in the sense of ovcia, and to use the phrase 
“ being in the fern of God,” to signify the “ being really and truly Goo. ’ 
Thus the term itself: is sufficiently explicit of the doctrine ; but the 
context would decia# the matter, were the verbal criticism less dec. dedly 
in favour of this interpretation. ‘The form of God” stands opposed to 
“the form of a servant.” This, say those critics who would make the 
‘orm of God an external < appearance only, means ‘the appearance age 
behaviour of a bendsman or slave, and not the essence of such a person,” 
But dovdcs, a slave, is not in the New, Testament taken in the same 
opprobrious seuse as among us. St. Paul calls himself “the slave of 


- 


(8) “1. Fo-ma, externus, hibitus, omne quod in oculos occurrit, imago, simi 
studo ” (Sel leusner * 


614 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. (PART 


Jesus Christ,” and our translators have, therefore, properly rendered 
the word by servant, as more exactly conveying the meaning intended. 
Now it is certain, that Christ was the servant or minister both of the 
Father and of his creatures. He himself declares, that he came not 
“to be ministered unto, but to minister ;” and as to be in the form of a 
servant is not, therefore, to have the appearance of a servant, but to be 
really a servant, so to be in the form of God is to be really Gop. This 
is rendered still stronger by the following clause, which is exegetic of 
the prece ling, as will appear from the literal rendering, the force of 
which is obscured by the copulative introduced into the common version. 
[t is not, « and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in 
the likeness of men,” but “ being made in the likeness of men,” which 
clearly denotes that he took the form of a servant by “ being made in 
the likeness of men,” so that, as Bishop Pearson irresistibly argues, 

“The phrase ‘in the form of God,’ not elsewhere mentioned, is used 
by the apostle with respect unto that other, of «the form of a servant,’ 
exegetically continued ‘in the likeness of men ;’ and the respect of one 
unto the other is so necessary, that if the form of God be not real and 
essential as the form of a servant, or the likeness of man, there is no 
force in the apostle’s words, nor will his argument be fit to work any 
great degree of humiliation upon the consideration of Christ’s exinani- 
tion. But by the form is certainly understood the true condition of a 
servant, and by the lzkeness is infallibly meant the real nature of man: 
nor doth the fashion, in which he was found, destroy, but rather assert 
the truth of his humanity. And therefore, as sure as Christ was really 
and essentially man, of the same nature with us, in whose similitude 
he was made; so certainly was he also really and essentially God, of 
the same nature and being with him, in whose form he did subsist.” 
(Discourses on the Creed.) 

The greatness of him who “ humbled himself” being thus laid down 
by the apostle, he proceeds to state what, in the process of his humilia- 
tion, he waived of that which was due to his greatness. He “thought 
it not robbery to be equal with God; but made himself of no reputa- 
tion ;” or, as many choose to render it, “he emptied himself.” Whe. 
ther the clause, “thought it not robbery,” be translated “esteemed it 
not an object to be caught at, or eagerly desired, to be as God,” or did 
not think it a “usurpation ;” or, as our translators have it, a “ robbery” 
to be equal with Gop, signifies little} for, after all the criticism ex. 
pended on this unusual] phrase, that Christ had a right to that which he 
might have retained, but chose to waive when he humbled himself, is 
sufficiently established both by the meaning of the word and by the 
connection itself. Some Socinians allow the common translation, and 
their own version is to the same effect,—he “ did not esteem it a prey,” 
which can only mean, though they attempt to cloud the matter in their 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 615 


note, that he did not esteem that as his own property to which he had 
no right. (9) That, then, which he did not account a “ prey,” a seizure 
af another’s right or property, was “to be equal with Gop.” Whether, 
n the phrase ro wa iva ©sw, to be equal with God, isa is to be taken 
adverbially, and translated as, like as, Gop; or, by enallage, for the 
singular adjective masculine, and to be rendered equal to God, has been 
matter or dispute. The grammatical authority appears to predominate 
in favour of the latter, (1) and it is supported by several of the fathers 
and the ancient versions ; but here, again, we are not left to the niceties 
of verbal criticism. If taken in either way, the sense is much the 
same: he thought it not a robbery, or usurpation, to be equal with God 

or, as God, which, as the sense determines, was an equality of honour 
and dignity; but made himself of no reputation. For as the phrase, 
the form of God, signifies his essential Divinity, so that of which he 
“emptied” or divested himself for the time was something to which he 
had a right consequent upon his Divinity ; and if to be equal with God, 
or to be as God, was his right, as a Divine person, it was not any thing 
which he was essentially of which he divested himself, for that were 
impossible , put something which, if he had not been God, it would have 
been a robbery and usurpation either to claim or retain. This, then, 
can be nothing else than the assumption of a Divine majesty and glory ; 
the proclamation of his own rights, and the demand of his creatures’ 
praise and homage, the laying aside of which, indeed, is admirably 
expressed in our translation, “but made himself of no reputation !” 
This is also established by the antithesis in the text. ‘The form of a 
servant” stands opposed to “ the form of God,”—a real servant to real 
Divinity ; and to be “equal” with God, or, as God, in glory, honour, 
and homage, is contrasted with the humiliations of a human state. ‘In 
that state he was made flesh, sent in the likeness of sinful flesh, subject 
1o the infirmities and miseries of this life; in that state he was “ made 
of a woman, made under the law,” and so obliged to fulfil the same ; 
in that state he was born, and lived to manhood in a mean condition : 
was “despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted 
with grief;” in that state, being thus made man, he took upon him “ the 
form of a servant.” If any man doubt how Christ emptied himself, the 
text will satisfy him,—* by taking the form of a servant:” if any still 
question how he took the form of a servant, he hath the apostle’s solu- 
tion,—“ by being made in the dikeness of men.” And being found in 
fashion as a man; being already by his exinanition, in the form of a 


(9) ** Non rapinam, aut spolium alicui, detractum, duxit.” (Rosenmuller.) So 
the ancient versions. ‘* Non rapinam arbitratus est.” (Vulgate.) ‘‘ Non rapinam 
hoc existimavit.” (Syriac.) 

\1) See Pearson on the Creed, Art. 2, note; Schleusner, Erasmus, and 
Schmidt. 


616 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES [PART 


servant, he humbled himself, becoming “ onedient unto death, even the 
death of the cross.” (Bishop Pearson.) ‘The first stage of his humilia- 
tion was his assuming “ the form of a servant ;” the completion of it, 
his “obedience unto death.” But what say the Socinians? As with 
them to be in the form of God means to be invested with miraculous 
powers, so to empty or divest himself, was his not exerting those powers 
in order to prevent his crucifixion. The truth, however, is, that he 
* emptied” himself, not at his crucifixion, but when he took upon him 
the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; so that, if 
to divest or empty himself be explained of laying down his miraculous 
gifts, he taid them down before he became man, that is, according ‘o 
them, before he had any existence. ‘There is no alternative, in this aud 
many similar passages, between orthodoxy and the most glaring critical 
absurdity. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


Humaniry or Curist—Hypostatric Unrion—ERrors AS TO THE 
Person or Curist. 


in the present day, the controversy as to the person of Christ is 
almost wholly confined to the question of his Divinity ; but, in the early 
ages of the Church, it was necessary to establish his proper humanity. 
The denial of this appears to have existed as early as the time of St. 
John, who, in his epistles, excludes from the pale of the Church all who 
denied that Christ was come in THE FLEsH. As his Gospel, therefore, 
proclaims the Godhead, so his epistles defend also the doctrine of his 
humanity. 

The source of this ancient error appears to have been a philosopnical 
one. Both in the oriental and Greek schools, it was a favourite notion, 
that whatever was joined to matter was necessarily contaminated by it, 
and that the highest perfection of this life was abstraction from materia] 
things, and, in another, a total and final separation from the body. 
This opinion was, also, the probable cause cf leading some persons, in 
St. Paul’s time, to deny the reality of a resurrection, and to explain it 
figuratively. But, however that may be, it was one of the chief grounds 
of the rejection of the proper humanity of Christ among the different 
branches of the Gnostics, who, indeed, erred as to both natures. he 
things which the Scriptures attribute to the human nature of our Lord 
hey did not deny ; but affirmed that they took place in appearance 
only, and they were, therefore, called Docete and Phantasiaste. Ata 
later period, Eutyches fell into a similar error, by teaching that the 
human nature of Christ was absorbed into the Divine, and -hat his body 
had nt rea] existence. ‘These errors have passed away, and dange 


SECOND. | TUELOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 617 


now lies only on one side; not, indeed, because men are become less 
able or less disposed to err, but because philosophy,—from vain pre- 
tences to which, or a proud reliance upon it, almost all great re'igious 
errors spring,—has, in later ages, taken a different character. 

While these errors denied the real existence of the body of Christ, 
the Apolloninarian heresy rejected the existence of a human soul in our 
I.ord, and taught that the Godhead supplied its place. Thus both these 
views denied to Christ a proper humanity, and both were, accordingly, 
condemned by the genera! Church. 

Among those who held the union of two natures in Christ, the Divito 
and human, which, in theological language is called the hypostatical, or 
personal union, several distinctions were alsu made which led to a 
diversity of opinion. The Nestorians acknowledged two persons in our 
Lord, mystically and more closely united than any human analogy can 
explain. The Monophysites contended for one person and one nature, 
“the two being supposed to be, in some mysterious manner, confounded. 
The Monothelites acknowledged two natures and one will. Various 
other vefinements were, at different times, propagated; but the true 
sense of Scripture appears to have been very accurately expressed by 
the council of Chalcedon, in the fifth century,—that in Christ there is 
one person; in the unity of person, two natures, the Divine and the 
human; and that there is no change, or mixture, or confusion of these 
two natures, but that each retains its own distinguishing properties. 
With this agrees the Athanasian Creed, whatever be its date,—* Per- 
fect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul, and human flesh sub- 
sisting—Who although he be God and man, vet he is not two ; but one 
Christ: one, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh; but by 
taking the manhood into God; one altogether, not by confusion of sub- 
stance, but by unity of person; for as the reasonable soul -and flesh is 
one man, so God and man is one Christ.” The Church of England, 
by adopting this creed, has adopted its doctrine on the hypostatical 
union, ard has farther professed it in her second article. “ ‘The Son, 
which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the 
Father, the very and éternal God, of one substance with the Father, 
took man’s nature in the womb of the blessed virgin of her substance , 
so that the two whole and perfect natures, that is to say, the Godhead 
aiid manhood, were joined together in one person, never to be divided, 
whereof is one Christ, very God and very man.” 

Whatever objections may be raised against these views by the mere 
reason of man, unable to comprehend mysteries so high, but often bold 
enough to impugn them, they certainly exhibit the doctrine of the New 
Testament on these important subjects, though expressed in different 
terms. Nor are these formularies to be charged with originating such 
distinctions and adding them to the simpiicity of Seripture, as thes 


618 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


often unjustly are by those who, either from lurking errors in their own 
minds, or from a vain affectation of being independent of human autho. 
rity, are most prone to question them. Such expositions of faith were 
rendered necessary by the dangerous speculations and human refine. 
ments to which we have above adverted ; and were intended to be (what 
they may be easily proved from Scripture to be in reality) summaries of 
inspired doctrines ; not new distinctions, but declarations of what had 
been before taught by the Holy Spirit on the subject of the hypostatical 
union of natures in Christ; and the accordance of these admirable 
summaries with the Scriptures themselves will be very obvious to all 
who yield to their plain and unperverted testimony. ‘That Christ is 
very Gop, has been already proved from the Scriptures, at considerable 
length ; that he was truly a man, no one will be found to doubt; that 
he is but one person, is sufficiently clear from this, that no distinction 
into two was ever made by himself, or by his apostles, and from ac- 
tions peculiar to Godhead being sometimes ascribed to him under his 
human appellations; and actions and sufferings peculiar to humanity 
being also predicated of him under Divine titles. ‘That in him there is 
no confusion of the two natures, is evident from the absolute manner 
in which both his natures are constantly spoken of in the Scriptures. 
His Godhead was not deteriorated by uniting itself with a human 
body, for “he is the true God ;” his humanity was not, while on earth, 
exalted into properties which made it different in kind to the humanity 
of his creatures; for, “as the children were partakers of flesh and 
blood, he also took part of the samz.” Ifthe Divine nature in him 
had been imperfect, it would have lost its essential character, for it is 
essential to Deity to be perfect and complete; if any of the essential 
properties of human nature had been wanting, he would not have been 
man; if, as some of the preceding notions implied, Divine and human 
had been mixed and confounded in him, he would have been a com. 
pounded being, neither God nor man. Nothing was deficient in his 
humanity, nothing in his Divinity, and yet he is one Christ. This is 
clearly the doctrine of the Scripture, and it is admirably expressed in 
the creeds akove quoted; and, on that account, they are entitled to 
great respect. ‘They embody the sentiments of some of the greatest 
men that ever lived in the Church, in language weighed with the ut- 
most care and accuracy; and they are venerable records of the faith 
of distant ages. 

These two circumstances, the completeness of each nature, and the 
union of both in one person, is the only key to the language of the New 
Testament, and so entirely explains and harmonizes the whole as to 
afford the strongest proof, next to its explicit verbal statements, of the 
doctrine that our Lord is at once truly God and truly man. On the | 
other hand, the impracticability of giving a consistent explanation of the 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 619 


_testimony of God “ concerning his Son Jesus Christ” on all other hypo- 
sheses, entirely confutes them. In one of two ways only will it be 
found, by every one who makes the trial honestly, that att the pas- 
sages of holy writ respecting the person of Christ can be explained ; 
either by referring them, according to the rule of the ancient fathers, to 
the @¢odovia, by which they meant every thing that related to the 
Divinity of our Saviour; or to the Osovoysa, by which they meant his 
incarnation, and every thing that he did in the flesh to procure the sal- 
vation of mankind. This distinction is expressed in modern theological © 
lauguage, by considering some things which are spoken of Christ, as 
said of his Divine, others of his human nature; and he who takes this 
principle of interpretation along with him will seldom find any difficulty 
in apprehending the sense of the sacred writers, though the subjects 
themselves be often, to human minds, inscrutable. 

Does any one ask, for instance, if Jesus Christ was truly Gop, how 
‘~he could be born and die? how he could grow in wisdom and sta- 
ture? how he could be subject to law? be tempted? stand in need of 
prayer? how his soul could be “ exceeding sorrowrul even unto death ?” 
be “forsaken of his Father?” purchase the Church with “his own 
blood?” have “a joy set before him?” be exalted? have “all power 
in heaven and earth” given to him? &c. The answer is, that he was 
also MAN. 

If, on the other hand, it be a matter.of surprise, that a visIBLE MAN 
should heal diseases at his will, and without referring to any higher 
authority, as he often did; still the winds and the waves; know the 
thoughts of men’s hearts; foresee his own passion in all its circum. 
stances ; authoritatively forgive sins; be exalted to absolute dominion 
over every creature in heaven and earth; be present wherever two or 
three are gathered in his name ; be with his disciples to the end of the 
world ; claim universal homage and the bowing of the knee of all crea- 
tures to his name; be associated with the Father in solemn ascrip- 
tions of glory and thanksgiving, and bear even the awful names of God, 
names of description and revelation, names which express Divine attri. 
butes :—what is the answer? Can the Socinian scheme, which allows 
him to be a man only, produce a reply? Can it furnish a reasonable 
interpretation of texts of sacred writ which affirm al] these things? 
Can it suggest any solution which does not imply that the sacred pen- 
men vere not only careless writers, but writers who, if they had 
studied to be misunderstood, could not more delusively have expressed 
themselves? The only hypothesis, explanatory of all these statements, 
is, that Chris. 2 Gop as well as man, and by this the consistency of 
the sacred writers is brought out, and a harmonizing strain of sent. 
ment is seen compacting the Scriptures into one agreeing and mutuallv 
adjusted revelation. 


620 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. I PART 


But the union of the two natures in Christ in one hypostasis, or 
person, is equally essential to the full exposition of the Scriptures, as 
the existence of two distinctively, the Divine and the human; and with. 
out it many passages lose all force, because they lose all meaning. In 
what possible sense could it be said of rue Worp, that “he was made 
(or became) FLEsH,” if no such personal unity existed? The Socinians 
themselves seem to acknowledge the force of this, and therefore trans. 
late “and the Word was flesh,” affirming falsely, as various critics 
have abundantly shown, that the most usual meaning of yivou.cs is to be. 
Without the hypostatical union, how could the argument of our Lord be 
supported, that the Messiah is both David’s Son and David’s Lorn? 
If this is asserted of two persons, then the argument is gone; if of 
one, then two natures, one which had authority as Lord, and the other 
capable of natural descent, were united in one person. Allowing that 
we have established it, that the appellative ‘ Son of God” is the desig- 
nation of a Divine relation, but for this personal union the visible Christ 
could not be, according to St. Peter’s confession, “ the Son of the living 
God.” By this doctrine we also learn how it was that “the Church 
of Gop” was “ purchased by his own BLoop.” Even if we concede 
the genuine reading to be “ the Lord,” this concession yields nothing to 
the Socinians, uniess the term Lorp were a human title, which has been 
already disproved, and unless a mere man could be “ Lorp both of the 
dead and the living,” could wield universal sovereignty, and be entitled 
to universal homage. If, then, the title “raz Lorp” be an appellation 
of Christ’s superior nature, in ne other sense could it be said that the 
Church was purchased by nis own blood, than by supposing the exist- 
ence of that union which we call personal; a union which alone dis- 
tinguishes the sufferings of Christ from that of his martyred followers, 
gave to them a merit which theirs had not, and made “his blood” 
capable of purcHAsSING the salvation of the “Church.” For, disallow 
that union, and we can see no possible meaning in calling the blood of 
Christ “ the blood of God,” or, if it please better, “of the Lord ;” or in 
what that great peculiarity consisted which made it capable of pur- 
chasing or redeeming. 

Dr. Pye Smith, in his very able work on the per on of Christ, has 
rather inconsiderately blamed the orthodox, for “the very serious offence 
of sometimes using language which applies to the Divine nature the 
circumstances and properties which could only attach to his humanity,’ 
as giving unhappy occasion to the objections and derisions of their 
opponents. As he gives uo instances, he had his eye, probably, upon 
some edtreme cases; but if he meant it as a remark of general applica- 
ion, It seems to have arisen from a very mistaken view, and assumes, 
that the objections of opponents lie rather against terms than against the 
dectrine of Christ’s Divinity itself. 


SECOND. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 62] 


This is so far from being the case, that, if the orthodox were to 
attend to the caution given by this writer on this subject, they would not 
approach one step nearer to the conversion of those who are in this 
fundamental error, supporting it, as they do, by perversions so manifest, 
and by criticisms so shameless. I am no apologist, however, of real 
“errors and faults” in theological language ; but the practice referred 
to, so far from being “a serious offence,” has the authority of the 
writers of the New Testament. Argumentatively, the distinction 
hetween the Divine and human natures, according to the rule before 
given, must be maintained; but when speaking cursorily, and on the 
assumption of the unquestionable truth of the hypostatic union of the 
Divine and human natures,—a manner of speaking, which, it is hoped, 
all true Christians adopt, as arising from their settled convictions on 
this point,—those very terms, so common among the orthodox, and so 
objectionable to those who “deny the Lord that bought them,” must be 
maintained in spite of “derision,” or the language of the New Testa- 
ment must be dropped, or at least be made very select, if this danger- 
ous, and in the result, this betraying courtesy be adopted. For what 
does Dr. P. Smith gain, when cautioning the believer against the use 
of the phrase “the blood of Gop,” by reminding him that there is 
reason to prefer the reading, “the Church of the Lord, which he hath 
‘purchased by his own blood ?”’ 'The orthodox contend, that the appellation 
“‘7HE Lorp,” when applied to our Saviour, is his title as Gop, and the 
heterodox know, also, that the “blood of the Lord” is a phrase with us 
entirely equivalent to “the blood of Gop.” They know, too, that we 
neither believe that “Gop” nor “THE Lorp” could die; but in using 
the established phrase, the all-important doctrine of the existence of 
such a union between the two natures of our Lord as to make 
the blood which he shed more than the blood of a mere man, more 
than the blood of his mere humanity itself, is maintained and exhi- 
bited; and while we allow that God could not die, yet that there 
is a most important sense in which the blood of Christ was “ the blood 
of Gop.” 

We do not attempt to explain this mystery, but we find it on record ; 
and, in point of fact, that carefu) appropriation of the properties of the 
two natures to each respectively, which Dr. Pye Smith recommends, is 
not very frequent in the New Testament, and for this obvious reason, 
that the question of our Lord’s Divinity is more generally introduced as 
an indisputed principle, than argued upon. It is true, that the Apostle 
Paul lays it down, that our Lord was of the seed of David, ‘“ according 
to the ruesn,” ana “the Son of God, according to the Sririv oF HOLI- 
ness.” Here is an instance of the distinction ; but generally this is not 
observed by the apostles, because the equally fundamental doctrine was 
always present to them, that the same PERSON who was FLESH was also 


622 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. |PART 


truly Gop. Hence they scruple not to say, that «the Lord of glory 
was crucified,” that “the Prince of life was killed,” and that Ha who 
was “in the form of God,” became “obedient unto death, even the 
death of the cross.” 

We return, from this digression, to notice a few other passages, the 
meaning of which can only be opened by the doctrine of the personal 
union of the Divine and human natures in Christ. “ For in him dwell. 
éth all the fulness of the Godhead sopity,” Col. ii, 9; not by a type 
and figure, but, as the word cwpatixwe signifies really and substantially, 
and for the full exposition, we must add, by personal union; for we 
have no other idea by which to explain an expression never used to 
signify the inhabitation of good men by God, and which is here applied 
to Christ in a way of eminence and peculiarity. (2) 

“Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of 
his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he 
had By HIMSELF purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the 
Majesty on high,” Heb. i, 3. To this passage, also, the hypostatical 
union is the only key. Of whom does the apostle speak, when he 
says, “when he had sy HIMseELF purged our sins,” but of Him who ts » 
“the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person ?” 
He, by urMsexr, “ purged our sins ;” yet this was done by the shedding 
of his blood. In that higher nature, however, he could not suffer death ; 
and nothing could make the sufferings of his humanity a purification of 
sins BY HIMSELF, but such a union as should constitute one person :— 
for, unless this be allowed, either the characters of Divinity in the pre. 
ceding verses are characters of a merely human being ; or else that 
higher nature was capable of suffering death ; or, if not, the purification 
was not made by HIMSELF, which yet the text affirms. 

In fine, all passages which (not to mention many others) come 
under the following classes have their true interpretation thus laid 
open, and are generally utterly unmeaning on any other hypothesis. 

1, Those which, like some of the foregoing, speak of the efficacy of 
the sufferings of Christ for the remission of sins. In this class the two 
following may be given as examples. Heb. ii, 14, “ Forasmuch, then, 
as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise 
took-part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that 
had the power of death,” &c. Here the efficacy of the death of Christ 
is explicitly stated; but as explicitly is it said to be the death of one 
who partook of flesh and blood, or who assumed human nature. The 
power of deliverance is ascribed to him who thus invested himself with 
a nature below that of his own original nature; but in that lower nature 

(2) ‘Swparccws, h. e. vere, perfectissime, non typice, et umbraliter, sicut in V. 


T. Deus se manifestavit. Est autem inhabitatio illa et unio personalis, et singu. 
larissima.” (Glassius.) 


SECOND. ] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 623 


HE dies, and by that pearu he delivers those who had been all their 
lifetime subject to bondage. The second is Colossians i, 14. &c, “In 
whom we have redemption through uts blood, even the forgiveness ot 
sins, WHO is the image of the invisible God,” &c. In this passage, the 
lofty description which is given of the person of Christ stands in imme. 
diate connection with the mention of the efficacy of “his blood,” and 
is to be considered as the reason why, through that blood, redemption 
and remission of sins became attainable. Thus “without shedding of 
blood there could be no remission ;” but the blood of Jesus only 1s thus 
efficacious, who is “the image of the invisible God,” the “ Creator” of 
all things. Hs blood it could not be but for the hypostatical union ; 
and it is equally true, that but for that he could have had no blood to 
shed ; because, as “ the image of the invisible God,” that is, God’s equal, 
ur God himself, his nature was incapable of death. _ 

" 2. In the second class are all those passages which argue from the 
compassion which our Lord manifested in his humiliation, and his own 
experience of sufferings, to the exercise of confidence in him by his 
people in dangers and afllictive circumstances. Of these the following 
may be given for the sake of illustration. Heb. iv, 15, 16, “For we 
nave not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our 
infirmities ; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without 
sin. Let us, therefore, come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we 
may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” Several 
similar passages occur in the early part of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
and the argument of them all is precisely the same. The humiliation 
of our Lord, and his acquaintance with human woes, may assure us of 
nis sympathy ; but sympathy is not help. He is represented, therefore, 
as the source of “ succour,” as the “ Author of salvation,” “the Captain 
of our salvation,” in consequence of the sufferings he endured ; and to 
nim all his people are directed to fly for aid in prayer, and by entire 
trust in his power, grace, and presence, to assure themselves that timely 
succour and final salvation shall be bestowed upon them by him. Now 
here, also, it is clear, that the sufferer and the Saviour are the same 
person. The man might sufer ; but sufferings could not enable the man 
to save; they could give no new qualification to human nature, nor 
hestow upon that nature any new right. But, beside the nature which 
ruffered, and learned the bitterness of human woes by experience, there 
is a nature which can know the sufferings of all others, in all places, at 
all times ; which can also ascertain the “ time of need” with exactness, 
and the “ grace” suitable to it; which can effectually “help” and sus- 
tain the sorrows of the very heart, a power peculiar to Divinity, and finally 
bestow “ eternal salvation.” This must be Divine ; but it is one in per. 
sonal union with that which suffered and was taught sympathy, and it 
is this union constitutes that “Great Hicu Prizst” of our profession, 


624 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


that “merciful and faithful High Priest,” who is able “to succour us 
when we are tempted.” ‘Thus, as it has been well observed on this 
subject, “It is by the union of two natures in one person that Christ is 
qualified to be the Saviour of the world. He became man, that, with 
the greatest possible advantage to those whom he was sent to instruct, 
he might teach them the nature and the will of God; that his life might 
be their cxample; that by being once compassed with the infirmities of 
human nature, he might give them assurance of his fellow teeling ; that 
by suffering on the cross he might make atonement for their sins; and 
that in his reward they might behold the earnest and the pattern of 
theirs. 

“But had Jesus been only man, or had he been one of the spirits 
that surround the throne of God, he could not have accumplished the 
work which he undertook: for the whole obedience of every creature 
being due to the Creator, no part of that obedience can be placed to the 
account of other creatures, so as to supply the defects of their service, 
or to rescue them from the punishment which they deserve. The 
Scriptures, therefore, reveal, that he who appeared upon earth as man, 
is also God, and as God, was mighty to save; and by this revelation 
they teach us, that the merit of our Lord’s obedience, and the efficacy 
of his interposition, depend upon the hypostatical union. 

« All modern sects of Christians agree in admitting that the greatest 
benefits arise to us from the Saviour of the world being man; but the 
Arians and Socinians contend earnestly, that his sufferings do not derive 
any value from his being God; and their reasoning is specious. You 
suy, they argue, that Jesus Christ, who suffered for the sins of men, is 
both God and man. You must either say that God suffered, or that he 
did not suffer: if you say that God suffered, you do indeed affix an 
infinite value to the sufferings; but you affirm that the Godhead is 
capable of suffering, which is both impious and absurd: if you say that 
God did not suffer, then, although the person that suffered had both a 
Divine and a human nature, the sufferings were merely those of a man, 
for, according to your own system, the two natures are distinct, and 
the Divine is impassible. 

“ In answer to this method of arguing, we may admit that the Godhead 
cannot suffer, and we do not pretend to explain the kind of support which 
the human nature derived, under its sufferings, from the Divine, or the 
manner in which the two were united. But from the uniform language 
of Scripture, which magnifies the love of God in giving his only -begot- 
ten Son, which speaks in the highest terms of the preciousness of the 
Llood of Christ, which represents him as coming, in the body that was 
prepared for him, to do that which sacrifice and burnt offering could not 
do: from all this we infer that there was a value, a merit, in the suffer. 
ings of this person, superior to that which belonged to the sufferings of 


SECOND.] YHEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 625 


any other: and as the same Scriptures intimate, in numberless places, 
tne strictest union between the Divine and human nature of Christ, by 
applying to him promiscuously the actions which belong to each nature, 
we hold that it is impossible for us to separate in our imagination, this 
peculiar value which they affix to his sufferings from the peculiar dig. 
nity of his person. 

“The hypostatical union, then, is the corner stone ¢* our religion. 
We are too much accustomed, in all our researches, io perceive that 
. things are united, without our being able to investigate the bond which 
unites them, to feel any degree of surprise that we cannot answer all the 
questions which ingenious men have proposed upon this subject ; but we 
can clearly discern, in those purposes of the incarnation of the Son of 
God which the Scriptures declare, the reason why they have dwelt so 
largely upon his Divinity; and if we are careful to take into our view 
_the whole of that description which they give of the person by whom 
the remedy in the Gospel was brought ; if, in our speculations concern. 
ing him, we neither lose sight of the two parts which are clearly revealed, 
nor forget, what we cannot comprehend, that union between the two 
parts which is necessarily implied in the revelation of them, we shall 
perceive, in the character of the Messiah, a completeness and a 
suitableness to the design of his coming, which of themselves create a 
strong presumption that we have rightly interpreted the Scriptures.” 
(Dr. Hill.) 

On this evidence from the Holy Scriptures the doctrine of the Divi- 
nity of our blessed Saviour rests. Into the argument from antiquity my 
limits will not allow me to enter. If the great “falling away,” predicted 
by St. Paul, had involved, generally, this high doctrine; if both the 
Latin and Greek Churches had wholly departed from the faith, instead 
of having united, without intermission, to say, “Thou art the King of 
glory, O Christ,” “Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father,” the truth 
of God would not have been made of “none effect.” God would still 
have been true, though every man, from the age of inspiration, had 
become “a liar.” The Socinians have, of late years, shown great 
anxiety to obtain some suffrages from antiquity in their favour, and have 
collected every instance possible of early departure from the faith. 
They might, indeed, have found heretical pravity and its adherents, 
without travelling out of the New Testament; men not only near the 
apostolic age, but in the very days of the apostles, who rejected the 
resurrection, who consented not “to wholesome doctrine,” who made 
“ shipwreck of faith,” as well as of a good conscience, who denied “the 
only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ,” “the Lord that bought 
‘hem.” This kind of antiquity is, in truth, in their favour; and, as 
human nature is substantially the same in all ages, there is as much 


reason to expect errors in one age as another; but that any body of 
Vol. I. 40 


¢ 


626 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


Christians, in any sense entitled to be considered as an acknowledged 
branch of the Church of Christ, can be found, in primitive times, to give 
any sanction to their opinions and interpretations of Scripture, they have 
failed to establish. _ For full information on the subject of the opinions 
of the primitive Churches, and a full refutation of all the pretences 
which Arians and Socinians, in these later times, have made to be, in 
part, supported by primitive authority, the works of Bishop Bull, Dr. 
Waterland, and Bishop Horsley, (3) must be consulted ; and the result 
will show, that in the interpretation of the Scriptures given above, we 
are supported by the successive and according testimonies of all that is 
truly authoritative in those illustrious ages which furnished so many 
imperishable writings for the edification of the future Church, and so 
many martyrs and confessors of “the truth as it is in Jesus.” 

Among the numerous errors, with respect to the person of our Lord, 
which formerly sprung up in the Church, and were opposed, with an 
ever watchful zeal, by its authorities, three only can be said to have 
much influence in the present day, Arianism, Sabellianism, and Socini- 
anism. In our own country, the two former are almost entirely merged 
in the last, whose characteristic is the tenet of the simple humanity of 
Christ. Arrus, who gave his name to the first, seems to have wrought 
some of the floating errors of previous times into a kind of system. 
which, however, underwent various modifications among his followers. 
The distinguishing tenet of this system was, that Christ was the first 
end most exalted of creatures; that he was produced in a peculiar 
manner, and endowed with great perfections; that by him God made 
the world; that he alone proceeded immediately from Gop, while other 
things were produced mediately by him, and that all things were put 
under his administration. ‘The semi-Arians divided from the Arians, 
but still differed from the orthodox, in refusing to admit that the Son 
was homoousios, or of the same substance with the Father; but acknow- 
ledged him to be homoiousios, of a like substance with the Father. It 
was only, however, in appearance that they came nearer to the truth 
than the Arians themselves, for they contended that this likeness to the 
Father in essence was not by nature, but by peculiar privilege. In 
their system Christ, therefore, was but a creature. A still farther refine- 
ment on this doctrine was, in this country, advocated by Dr. Samuel 
Clarke, which Dr. Waterland, his great and illustrious opponent, showed, 
notwithstanding the orthodox terms employed, still implied that Chrast 
was a created being, unless an evident absurdity were admitted. (4) 


(3) See also Wilson’s Illustration of the Method of explaining the New Testa. 
ment by the early Opinions of Jews and Christians concerning Christ; and Dr 
Jamieson’s Vindication, &c. 

(4) Dr. Samuel Clarke’s hypothesis was, that there is one Supreme Being, 
who is the Father, and two subordinate, derived, and depen lent beings. But he 


SECON)).] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 627 


The Sabellian doctrine stands equally opposed to trinitarianism and 
to the Arian system. It asserts the Divinity of the Son and the Spirit 
against the latter, and denies the personality of both, in opposition to the 
former. Sabellius taught that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are 
only denominations of one hypostasis ; in other words, that there is but 
one person in the Godhead, and that the Son or Word are virtues, ema- 
nations, or functions only : that, under the Old Testament God delivered 
the law as Father ; under the New, dwelt among men, or was incar- 
nate, as the Son; and descended on the apostles as the Spirit. Be- 
cause their scheme, by denying a real Sonship, obliged them to acknow- 
ledge that it was the Father who suffered for the sins of men, the Sa- 
heliians were often, in the early ages, called Patripassians. 

On the refutation of these errors it is not necessary to dwell, both 
hecause they have now little influence, and chiefly because both are 
_ Involved in the Socinian question, and are decided by the establishment 
of the Scriptural doctrine of a trinity of Divine persons in the unity of 
‘the Godhead. If Jesus Christ be the Divine Son of God; if he was 
“sent” from God, and “ returned” tu God; if he distinguished himself 
from the Father both in his Divine and human nature, saying, as to the 
former, “I and my Father are onz,” and as to the latter, “ My Father is 
GREATER than [;” if there be any meaning at all in his declaration, 
“that no man knoweth the Son but the Father, and no man knoweth 
the Father but the Son,” words which cannot, by any possibility, be 
spoken of an official distinction, or of an emanation or operation; then 
all these passages prove a real personality, and are incapable of being 
explained by a modal one. This is the answer to the Sabellian opinion ; 
and as to the Arian hypothesis, it falls, with Socinianism, before that 
series of proofs which has already been adduced from Holy Writ, to 
establish the eternity, consubstantiality, coequality, and, consequently, 
the proper Divinity of our Redeemer; and, perhaps, the true reason 
why not even the semi-Arianism, argued with so much subtlety by Dr. 
Samuel Clarke, has been able to retain any influence among us, is less 
to be attributed to the able and learned writings of Dr. Waterland and 
others, who chased the error through all its changeful transformations, 
than to the manifest impossibility of conceiving of a being which is 
neither truly God nor a creature; and the total absence of all counte- 
nance in the Scriptures, however tortured, in favour of this opinion. 
Socinianism assumes a plausibility in some of its aspects, because Christ 


objected to call Christ a creature, thinking him something between a created and 
2 self-existent nature. Dr. C. appealed to the fathers; and Petavius, a learned 
Jesuit, in his Dogmata Theologica, had previously endeavoured to prove that the 
ante-Nicene fathers leaned to Arianism. Bishop Bull, in his great work on this 
subject, and Dr. Waterland may be considered as having fully put that qnéstion 
to rest in opposition to beth 


628 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. | [PAR 


was really a man; but semi-Arianism is a mere hypothesis, which can 
scarcely find a text of Scripture to pervert. 


CHAPTER XVII. 
Tue Personatiry AND Derry or THE Hoty Guost. 


Tue discussion of this great point of Christian doctrine may ba 
included in much narrower limits than those I have assigned to the 
Divinity of Christ, so many of the principles on which it rests having - 
been closely considered, and because the Deity of the Spirit, in several 
instances, inevitably follows from that of the Son. As the object of 
this work is to educe the doctrine of the sacred Scriptures on all the 
leading articles of faith, it will, however, be necessary to show the evi- 
dence which is there given to the two propositions in the title of the 
chapter :—that the Holy Ghost (from the Saxon word Gast, a Spzrit,) 
is a PERSON; and that he is Gop. 

As to the manner of his being, the orthodox doctrine is, that as Christ 
is God by an eternal FILIATION, so the Spirit is God by procession from 
the Father and the Son. “ And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord 
and giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, who 
with the Father and Son together, is worshipped and glorified.” (Nicene 
Creed.) “The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son, neither 
made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.” (Athanasian Creed.) 
“The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, is of one 
substance, majesty, and glory, with the Father and the Son, very and 
eternal Gop.” (Articles of the English Church.) The Latin Church 
introduced the term spzration, from spiro, to breathe, to denote the man. 
ner of this procession ; on which Dr. Owen remarks, “as the vital breath 
ef a man has a continual emanation from him, and yet is never sepa- 
rated utterly from his person, or forsaketh him, so doth the Spirit of the 
Father and the Son proceed from them by a continual Divine emana. 
tion, still abiding one with them.” On this refined view little can be 
said which has obvious Scriptural authority; and yet the very term by 
which the third person in the trinity is designated WIND or BREATH may 
as to the third person, be designed, like the term Son applied to the 
second, to convey, though imperfectly, some intimation of that manner 
of being by which both are distinguished from each other, and from the 
Father; and it was a remarkable action of our Lord, and one certainly 
which does not discountenance this idea, that when he imparted the 
Holy Ghost to his disciples, “he BrEATHED on them, and saith anto 
them, Reeeive ye the Holy Ghost,” John xx, 22. (5) 


(5) ‘The Father hith r:l:tion tothe Son, as the Father of the Son ; the Son 
to the Father, as the Sn of the Father; and the Holy Ghost being the spirit, or 





» 


SECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 629 


But whatever we may think as to the doctrine of “ spiratim,” the 
PRocession of the Holy Ghost rests on direct Scriptural authority, and 

is thus stated by Bishop Pearson :— 

“Now this procession of the Spirit, in reference to the Father, is 
delivered expressly, in relation to the Son, and is contained virtually in 
the Seriptures. First, it is expressly said, that the Holy Ghost pro. 
ceedeth from the Father, as our Saviour testifieth, ‘ When the Comforter 
is rine whom [ will send unto you from the Father, even the Spun 
of -:th, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me,’ 
fon xv, 26. And this is also evident from what hath been already 
asserted: for being the Father and the Spirit are the same God, and 
being so the same in the unity of the nature of God, are yet distinct in 
the personality, one of them must have the same nature from the other ; 
and because the Father hath been already shown to have it from none, 
it followeth that the Spirit hath it from him. 

“Secondly, though it be not expressly spoken in ‘the Scripture, that 
the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the Father and Son, yet the substance 
of the same truth is virtually contained there; because those very ex- 
pressions, which are spoken of the Holy Spirit in relation to the Father, 
for that reason because he proceedeth from the Father, are also spoken 
of the same Spirit in relation to the Son; and therefore there must be 
the same reason presupposed in reference to the Son, which is express- 
ed in reference to the Father. Because the Spirit proceedeth from the 
Father, therefore it is called the Spirit of God and the Spirit of the 
Father. ‘It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which 
speaketh in you,’ Matt. x, 20. For by the language of the apostle, the 
Spirit of God is the Spirit which is of God, saying, ‘ The things of God 
knoweth no man but the Spirit of God. And we have received not the 
spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God,’ 1 Cor. i, 11, 12. 
Now the same Spirit is also called the Spirit of the Son; for ‘ because 
we are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts,’ 
Gal. iv, 6: the Spirit of Christ ; ‘ Now if any man have not the Spirit 
of Christ, he is none of his,’ Rom. viii, 9; ‘even the Spirit of Christ 
which was in the prophets,’ 1 Peter i, 11; the Spirit of Jesus Christ, as 
the apostle speaks, ‘I know that this shall turn to my salvation, through 
your prayer, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ,’ Phil. i, 19. 
if then the Holy Ghost be called the Spirit of the Father, because he 
proceedeth from the Father, it followeth that, being called also the Spi- 
rit of the Son, he proceedeth also from the Son. 

‘«; Again: because the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the Father, he is 
therefore sent by the Father, as from him who hath by the original com. 


breath of the Father and the Son, to both.” (Lawson’s Theo. Pol.) But though 
breath or wind is the radical signification of zvevya, as also of sptritus, yet, pro- 
bably from its sacredness, it is but rarely used in that sense in the New Testament. 


630 fHEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. (PART 


munication, a right of mission; as ‘the Comforter, which is the Holy 
Ghost, whom the Father will send,’ John xiv, 26. But the same Spirit 
which is sent by the Father is also sent by the Son, as he saith, ‘When 
the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you.’ Therefore the 
Son kath the same right of mission with the Father, and consequently 
must be acknowledged to have communicated the same essence. The 
Father is never sent by the Son, because he received not the Godhead 
from him; but the Father sendeth the Son, because he communicated 
the Godhead to him: in the same manner, neither the Father nor the 
Son is ever sent by the Holy Spirit ; because neither of them received 
the Divine nature from the Spirit: but both the Father and the Son 
sendeth the Holy Ghost, because the Divine nature, common to both 
the Father and the Son, was communicated by them both to the Holy 
Ghost. As therefore the Scriptures declare expressly, that the Spirit 
proceedeth from the Father; so do they also virtually teach that he 
proceedeth from the Son.” (Discourses on the Creed.) 

In opposition to the doctrine of the personality and Deity of the Spirit, 
stands the Socinian hypothesis, which I state before the evidence from 
Scripture is adduced, that it may be seen, upon examination of inspired 
testimony, how far it is supported by that authority. Arius regarded 
the Spirit not only as a creature, but as created by Christ, «ricua krvc- 
uatoc, the creature of a creature. Some time afterward, his personality 
was wholly denied by the Arians, and he was considered as the exerted 
energy of God. This appears to have been the notion of Socinus, and, 
with occasional modifications, has been adopted by his followers. They 
sometimes regard him as an attribute, and at others resolve the pas- 
sages in which he is spoken of into a periphrasis, or circumlocution 
for God himself; or, to express both in one, into a figure of speech. 

In establishing the proper personality and Deity of the Holy Ghost, 
the first argument is drawn from the frequent association, in Scripture, 
of a person, under that appellation, with two other persons, one of whom, 
“the Father,” is by all acknowledged to be Divine ; and the ascription to 
each of them, or to the three in union, of the same acts, titles, and autho- 
rity, with worship of the same kind, and, for any distinction that is made, 
in an equal degree. This argument has already been applied to establish 
the Divinity of the Son,whose personality is not questioned; and the terms 
of the proposition may be as satisfactorily established as to the Holy Spi- 
rit, and will prove at the same time both his personality and his Divinity. 

With respect to the Son, we have seen that, as so great and funda- 
nental a doctrine as his Deity might naturally be expected to be an- 
nounced in the Old Testament revelation, though its full manifestation 
should be reserved to the New; so it was, in fact, not faintly shadowed 
forth, but displayed with so much clearness as to become an article of 
faith in the Jewish Church. The manifestation of the existence and 


SECOND. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 631 


Divinity of the Holy Spirit may also be expected in the law and the 
prophets, and is, in fact, to be traced there with equal certainty. The 
Sririr is represented as an agent in creation, “moving upon the face 
of the waters ;” and it forms no objection to the argument, that creation 
is ascribed to the Father, and also to the Son, but a great confirmation 
of it. ‘That creation should be effected by all the three persons of the 
Godhead, though acting in different respects, yet so that each should be 
a Creator, and, therefore, both a person and a Divine person can be 
explained only by their unity in one essence. On every other hypothe- 
sis this Scriptural fact is disallowed, and therefore no other hypothesis 
can be true. If the Spirit of God be a mere influence, then he is nota 
Creditor, distinct from the Father and the Son, because he is not a per- 
son; but this is refuted both by the passage just quoted and by Psalm 
Xxxiii, 6, “ By the Worp or rue Lorp were the heavens made; and 
all the host of them by the Brearu (Heb. Sprrir) of.his mouth.”” This 
is farther confirmed by Job xxxiii, 4, “The Sprrir or Gop hath made 
me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life;” where the 
second clause is obviously exegetic of the former,,and the whole text 
proves that, in the patriarchal age, the followers of the true religion 
ascribed creation to the Spirit, as well as to the Father; and that one 
of his appellations was “ the Brearu of the Almighty.” Did such pas- 
sages stand alone, there might indeed be some plausibility in the criticism 
which solves them by a personification ; but, connected as they are with 
that whole body of evidence, which has been and shall be adduced, as 
to the concurring doctrine of both Testaments, they are inexpugnable. 
Again: if the personality of the Son and the Spirit be allowed, and yet 
it is contended that they were but instruments in creation, through whom 
the creative power of another operated, but which creative power was 
not possessed by them; on this hypothesis, too, neither the Spirit nor the 
Son can be said to create, any more than Moses created the serpent into 
which his rod was turned, and the Scriptures are again contradicted. 
To this association of the three persons in creative acts may be added 
a like association in acts of PRESERVATION, which has been well called 
a continued creation, and by that term is expressed in the following pas- 
sage: Psalm civ, 27-30, “ These wait all upon thee, that thou mayest 
give them their meat in due season. ‘Thou hidest thy face, they are 
troubled ; thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to dust : 
thou sENDEST ForTH THY Sprrit, they are created, and thou renewest 
the face of the earth.” It is not surely here meant that the Spirit, by 
which the generations of animals are perpetuated, is wind; and if he be 
called an attribute, wisdom, power, or both united, where do we read of 
such attributes being “sent,” “sent forth from God?” The personality 
of the Spirit is here as clearly marked as when St. Paul speaks of God 
“sending forth the Spirit of his Son,” and when our Lord promises to 


632 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES ; [PART 


» send” the Comforter ; and as the upnolding and preserving of created 
things is ascribea to the Father and the Son, so here they are ascribed, 
also, to the Spirit, “sent forth from” God to “ create and renew the face 
of the earth.” | 

The next association of the three persons we find in the inspiration 
of the prophets. “Gop spake unto our fathers by the prophets,” say3 
St. Paul, Heb. i, 1. St. Peter declares, that these “holy men of God 
spake as they were moved by the Hoty Guosrt,” 2 Pet. i, 21; and also 
that it was “the Spirit of Curisr which was in them,” 1 Pet. i, 11. 
We may defy any Socinian to interpret these three passages by making 
_the Spirit an influence or attribute, and thereby reducing the term Holy 
Ghost into a figure of speech. “ God,” in the first passage, is, unques- 
tionably, God the Father, and the “holy men of God,” the prophets, 
would then, according to this view, be moved by the influence of the 
Father ; but the influence, according to the third passage, which was 
the source of their inspiration, was the Spirit, or the influence of 
“Christ.” 'Thus'the passages contradict each other. Allow the trinity 
in unity, and you have no difficulty in calling the Spirit, the Spirit of 
the Father, and the Spirit of the Son, or the Spirit of either; but if the 
Spirit be an influence, that influence cannot be the influence of two per- 
sons, one God, and the other a creature. Even if they allowed the pre- 
existence of Christ, with Arians, the passages are inexplicable by 
Socinians ; but, denying his pre-existence, they have no subterfuge but 
to interpret “the Spirit of Christ,” the Spirit which prophesied of 
Christ, (New Version in loc.) which is a purely gratuitous paraphrase ; 
or “the spirit of an anointed one, or prophet ;” that is, the prophet’s own 
spirit, which is just as gratuitous, and as unsupported by any parallel, 
as the former. If, however, the Holy Spirit be the Spirit of the Father 
and of the Son, united in one essence, the passages are easily harmon. 
ized. In conjunction with the Father and the Son, he is the source of . 
that prophetic inspiration under which the prophets spoke and acted. 
So the same Srrrair which raised Christ from the dead is said by St. 
Peter to have preached by Noah, while the ark was preparing, an allu- 
sion to the passage, “ My Spirit shall not always strive (contend, debate) 
with man.” ‘This, we may observe, affords an eminent proof, that the 
writers of the New Testament understood the phrase “the Spirit of God,” 
as it occurs in the Old Testament, personally. For, whatever may be 
the full meaning of that dificult passage in St. Peter, Christ is clearly 
declarea to have preached by the Spirit in the days of Noah; that is, 
he, by the Spirit, inspired Noah to preach. If, then, the apostles un- 
derstood that the Holy Ghost was a person, a point which will presently 
be established, we have, in the text just quoted from the book of Genesis, 
a key to the meaning of those texts in the Old Testament, where the 
phrases “ My Spirit,” “ the Spirit of God,” and “ the Spirit of the Lord,” 


SECOND. |] THEOLOWICAL INSTITUTES. 633 


secur; and inspired authority is thus afforded us to interpret them as of 
a person ; and if of a person, the very effort made by Socinians to deny 
nis personality, itself indicates that that person must, from the lofty titles 
and works ascribed to him, be inevitably Divine. Such phrases occu 
in many passages of the Hebrew Scriptures; but in the following the 
S| irit is also eminently distinguished from two other persons. “ And 
now the Lorp Gop and his Sprrir hath sent me.” Isa. xlvilil, 16; or, 
rendered better, “ hath sent 11m and his Srrrrr,” both terms being in the 
accusative case. “Seek ye out of the book of the Lord, and read :— 
for my mouth it hath commanded, and unis spreir it hath gathered 
them,” Isa. xxxiv, 16. “I am with you, saith the Lorp or Hosts: 
according to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out 
of Egypt, so my Spirir remaineth among you: fear ye not. For thus 
saith the Lorp or nosts,—I will shake all nations, and the Dusirz oF 
ALL NATIONS shall come,” Haggai ii, 4-7. Here, also, the Sprrir of 
the Lord is seen collocated with the Lorp or Hosts and the Desire or 
ALL NATIONS, who is the Messiah. For other instances of the indica- 
tion of a trinity of Divire persons in the Old Testament, see chap. 9. 

Three persons, and tl ree only, are associated also, both in the Old 
and New Testament, as objects of supreme worship; asthe one name 
in which the religious <ct of solemn benediction is performed, and to 
which men are bound by solemn religious covenant. 

In the plural form of the name of God, which has already been con- 

sidered, (chapter 9,) each received equal adoration. That threefold 
personality seems to have given rise to the standing form of triple bene- 
diction used by the Jewish high priest, also before mentioned, (chapter 
9.) The very important fact, that, in the vision of Isaiah, chapter vi, 
the Lorp or wuss, who spake unto the prophet, is in Acts xxviii, 25, 
said to be the Hoty Guosr who spake to the prophet, while St. John 
declares that the glory which Isaiah saw was the glory of Curist, 
proves, indisputably, (chapter 9,) that each of the three persons bears 
this august appellation ; it gives also the reason for the threefold repeti- 
tion “ Hoty, HoLY, HOLY,” and it exhibits the prophet and the very se- 
_ raphs in deep and awful adoration before the triune Lordof hosts. Both 
the prophet and the seraphim were, therefore, worshippers of the Holy 
Ghost and of the Son, at the very time and by the very acts in which 
they worshipped the Father, which proves that, as the three persons 
received equal homage in a case which does not admit of the evasion 
uf pretended superior 1nd inferior worship, they are equal in majesty, 
glory, and essence. 

As in the tabernacle form of benediction, the triune Jehovah is recog- 
nized as the source of all grace and peace to his creatures ; so in apos- 
tolic formula of blessing, “'The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the 
ove of God, and the comMUNION oF THE Ho;y Spirit, be with you all. 


634 THEOLCGICAL INSTITUTES. [PART 


Amen.” Here the personality of the three is kept distinct, and the 
prayer to the three is, that Christians may have a common participation 
of the Holy Spirit, that is, doubtless, as he was promised by our Lord 
to his disciples, as a Comforter, as the source of light and spiritual life, 
ius the author of regeneration.” Thus the Spirit is acknowledged, equally 
with the Father and the Son, to be the source and the giver of the high. 
est spiritual blessings, while the solemn ministerial benediction is, from 
its specific character, to be regarded as an act of prayer to each of the 
tnree persons, and therefore is, at once, an acknowledgment of the Di- 
vinity and personality of each. ‘The same remark applies to Rev. 1, 4. 
5, “Grace be unto you and peace from Him which was, and which is, 
and which is tocome ; and from the seven spirits which are before his 
throne,” (an emblematical representation, in reference, probably, to the 
- golden branch with its seven lamps,) “ and from Jesus Christ.” The 
style of the book sufficiently accounts for the Holy Spirit being called 
“the seven spirits ;” but no created spirit or company of created spirits 
are ever spoken of under that appellation ; and the place assigned to the 
seven spirits between the mention of the Father and the Son, indicates, 
with certainty, that one of the sacred three, so eminent, and so exclu. 
sively eminent in both dispensations, is intended. 

The form of baptism next presents itself with demonstrative evidence 
on the two points before us, the personality and Divinity of the Holy 
Spirit. It isthe form of covenant by which the sacred three become 
our ONE or ONLY Gop, and we become uis people. “Go ye, therefore, 
and teach all nations, baptizing them in THE NAME of the FATHER, and 
of the Son, and of the Hoty Guosr.” In what manner is this text to 
be disposed of, if the personality of the Holy Ghost is denied? Is the 
form of baptism to be so understood as to imply that it is baptism in the 
name of one God, one creature, and one altribute ? The grossness of this 
absurdity refutes it, and proves that here, at least, there can be no per- 
sonification. If all the three, therefore, are persons, are we to make 
Christian baptism a baptism in the name of one God and two creatures? 
This would be too near an approach to idolatry, or rather, it would be 
idolatry itself; for, considering baptism as an act of dedication to God, 
the acceptance of God as our God, on our part, and the renunciation of 
all other deities, and all other religions, what could a heathen cunvert 
ccnceive of the two creatures so distinguished from all other creatures 
in heaven and in earth, and so associated with God himself as to form 
together the one name, to which, by that act, he was devoted, and which 
he was henceforward to profess and honour, but that they were equally 
Divine, unless special care were taken to instruct him that but one of the 
three was God, and the two others but creatures? But of this care, of 
this cautionary instruction, though so obviously necessary upon this the. 
ory, no single instance can be given in all the writings of the apostles. 


SSCOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES 635 


Baptism was not a new rite. It was used asa religious act among 
heathens, and especially before initiation into their mysteries. Prose- 
lytes to the law of Moses were, probably, received by baptism; ‘whe- . 
ther in, or into, the name of the God of Israel does not appear; (4) but 
necessarily on professing their faith in him as the true and only God. 
John, the forerunner of our Lord, baptized, but it does not appear that 
he baptized in the name or into the name of any one. ‘This baptism was 
to all but our Lord, who needed it not, a baptism “ unto repentance,” 
that is, on profession of repentance, to be followed by “fruits meet for 
repentance,” and into the expectation of the speedy approach of Mes- 
siah. But Christian baptism was directed to be in the Name of three 
persons, which peculiarly implies, first, the form of words to be used by 
the administration ; second, the authority conveyed to receive.such per- 
sons as had been made disciples into the Church, and, consequently, 
into covenant with God; third, the faith required of tl.e person bap- 
tized, faith in the existence of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and in their 
character according to the revelation made of each, first, by inspired 
teachers, and in after times by their writings ; and, fourth, consecration 
to the service of the three persons, having one name, which could be no 
other than that of the one Gop. What stronger proof of the Divinity 
of each can be given than in this single passage?’ The form exhibits 
three persons, without any note of superiority or inferiority, except that 
of the mere order in which they are placed. It conveys authority in 
the united name, and the authority is, therefore, equal. It supposes 
faith, that is, not merely belief, but, as the object of religious profession 
and adherence, trust in each, or collectively in the one name which 
unites the three in one; yet that which is Divine only can be properly 
the object of religious truth. It implies devotion to the service of each, 
the yielding of obedience, the consecration of every power of mind and 
body to each, and therefore each must have an equal right to this sur- 
render and to the authority which it implies. 

It has been objected, that baptism is, in the book of Acts, frequently 
mentioned as baptism “in the name of the Lord Jesus” simply, and from 
hence the Socinians would infer that the formula in the Gospel of St. 
Matthew was not in use. . If this were so, it would only conclude against 
the use of the words of our Lord as the standing form of baptism, but 
would prove nothing against the significancy of baptism in whatever 
form it might be administered. For as this passage in St. Matthew was 
the original commission under which, alone, the apostles had authority 


(6) The baptism of Jewish proselytes is a disputed point. It was strenuously 
maintained by Dr. Lightfoot, and opposed by Dr. Benson. Wall has, however. 
made the practice highly probable, and it is spoken of in the Gospels as a rite 
with which the Jews were familiar. Certainly it was a practice among the Jews 
near the Christian cra. 


636 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. _PARa 


to baptize at all, the zmport of the rite is marked out in it, and, whatever 
words they used in baptism, they were found to explain the import of 
. the rite, as laid down by their Master, to all disciples so received. But, 
from the passages adduced from the Acts, the inference that the form 
of baptism given in Matthew was not rigorously followed by the apos. 
tles does not follow, “ because the earliest Christian writers inforin us, 
that this solemn form of expression was uniformly employed from the 
beginning of the Christian Church. _ It is true, indeed, that the Apostle 
Peter said to those who were converted on the day of pentecost, Acts ii, 
38, ‘ Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus 
Christ ;’ and that, in different places of the book of Acts it is said, that 
persons were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus ; but there is inter 
nal evidence from the New Testament itself, that when the historian 
says, that persons were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, he 
means they were baptized according to the form prescribed by Jesus. 
Thus the question put, Acts xix, 3, ‘ Unto what then were ye baptized ? 
shows that he did not suppose it possible for any person who adminis- 
tered Christian baptism to omit the mention of ‘the Holy Ghost ;’ and 
even after the question, the historian, when he informs us that the disci- 
ples were baptized, is not solicitous to repeat the whole form, but says 
in his usual manner, Acts xix, 5, ‘ when they heard this, they were bap- 
tized, in the name of the Lord Jesus.’ There is another question pvt 
by the Apostle Paul, which shows us in what light he viewed the form 
of baptism: 1 Cor. i, 18, ‘Were ye baptized in the name of Paul ? 
Here the question implies that he considered the form of baptism as so 
sacred, that the introducing the name of a teacher into it was the same 
thing as introducing a new master into the kingdom of Christ.” 
Ecclesiastical antiquity comes in, also, to establish the exact use of 
this form in baptism, as the practice from the days of the apostles. The 
most ancient method was for the persons to be baptized to say, “I be- 
lieve in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” This was his 
profession of faith, and with respect to the administration, Justin Martyr, 
who was born soon after the death of the Apostle John, says, in his first 
Apology, “ Whosoever can be persuaded and believe that those things 
which are taught and asserted by us are true—are brought by us to & 
place where there is water, and regenerated according to the rite of re- 
generation, by which we ourselves have been born again. For then 
they are washed in the water, in the name of God the Father and Lord 
of all, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Ghost.” This 
passage, | may observe by the way, shows that, in the primitive Church, 
men were not baptized in order to their being taught, but taught in order 
to their being baptized, and that, consequently, baptism was not a mere 
expression of willingness to be instructed, but a profession of fuith, and 
a consecration to the trinity, aJ er the course of instruction was com- 


8ECOND.] THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. — 637 


pleted. Tertullian also says, “ the law of baptism is enjoined and the 
form prescribed, Go teach the nations, baptizing them into the name of 
the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” (De Baptismo.) 

The testimonies to this effect are abundant, (7) and, together with 
the form given by our Lord, they prove that every Christian in the 
first ages did, upon his very entrance into the Church of Christ, pro- 
fess his faith in the Divinity and personality of the Holy Ghost, as 
well as of the Father and the Son. 

But other arguments are not wanting to prove both the personality 
and the Divinity of the Holy Spirit. With respect to the former, 

1. The mode of his subsistence in the sacred trinity proves his per- 

sonality. He proceeds from the Father and the Son, and cannot, 
therefore, be either. To say that an attribute proceeds and comes 
forth would be a gross absurdity. 
_ 2.-From so many Scriptures being wholly unintelligible and even 
. absurd, unless the Holy Ghost is allowed te be a person. For as those 
who take the phrase as ascribing no more than a figurative personality 
to an attribute, make that attribute to be the energy or power of God, 
they reduce such passages as the following to utter unmeaningness : 
“ God anointed Jesus with the Holy Ghost and with power,” that is, with 
the power of God and with power. “That ye may abound in hope 
through the power of the Holy Ghost,” that is, through the power of 
power. “In demonstration of the Spirit and of power,” that is, in de- 
monstration of power and of power. And if it should be pleaded that 
the last passage is a Hebraism for “ powerful demonstration of the 
Spirit,” it makes the interpretation still more obviously absurd, for it 
would then be “ the powerful demonstration of power.” “It seemed 
good to the Holy Ghost,” to the power of God, “and to us.” “The 
Spirit and the bride say, Come,”—the power of God and the bride say, 
Come. Modern Unitarians, from Dr. Priestley to Mr. Belsham, ven- 
ture to find fault with the style of the apostles in some instances ; and 
those penmen of the Holy Spirit have, indeed, a very unfortunate me. 
thod of expressing themselves for those who would make them the 
patrons of Socinianism; but they would more justly deserve the cen- 
sures of these judges of the “ words which the Holy Ghost” taught, haa 
they been really such writers as the Socinian scheme would make them, 
and of which the above are instances. 

3. Personification of any kind is, in some passages in which the Holy 
Ghost is spoken of, impossible. The reality which this figure of speech 
is said to present to us is either some of the attributes of God, or else 
the doctrine of the Gospel. Let this theory, then, be tried upon the 
following passages :—“ He shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever - 


(7) Se> Wall's History of Infant Baptism and Bingham’s Antiquities 


ae Ok 
et 





Hts THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTFS. [PART - 


he shall hear, that shall he speak.” \ Sat attribute of God can here 
“he personified? And if the doctrine of the Gospel be arrayed with 


pérsonal attributes, where is there an instance of so monstrous a proso- 


popeia as this passage would present 1—the doctrine of the Gospel not 


speaking “of himself” but speaking “ whatsoever he shall hear!” 
“ The Spirit maketh intercession for us.”” What attribute is capable of 
interceding, or how can the doctrine of the Gospel intercede? Personi- 


. fication, too, is the language of poetry, and takes place naturally only 


in excited and elevated discourse ; but if the Holy Spirit be a, personi- 
fication, we find it in the ordinary and cool strain of mere narration and 
ar.jumentative discourse in the New Testament, and in the most inci. 
duntal conversations. ‘Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye 
believed? We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy 
Ghost.” How impossible is it here to extort, by any process whatever, 
even the shadow of a personification of either any attribute of God, or 
of the doctrine of the Gospel. So again, “The Spirit said unto Philip, 
Go near, and join thyself to this chariot.” Could it be any attribute of 
God which said this, or could it be the doctrine of the Gospel ? 

It is in vain, then, to speak of the personification of wisdom in the 
book of Proverbs, and of charity in the writings of St. Paul; and if 
even instances of the personification of Divine attributes and of the 
doctrine of the Gospel could be found under this very term, the Holy 
Spirit, yet the above texts and numerous other passages being utterly 
incapable of being so resolved, would still teach the doctrine of a per- 
sonal Holy Ghost. ‘The passage on which such interpreters chiefly 
rely as an instance of the personification of the doctrine of the Gospel 
is 2 Cor. iii, 6, “ Who also hath made us able ministers of the New 
Testament, not of the letter, but of the Spirit ; for the letter killeth, but 
the Spirit giveth life.” To this Witsius well replies :— 

“ Were we to grant that the Spirit, by a metonymy, denotes the doc. 
trine of the Gospel ; what is improperly ascribed there to the Gospel as 
an exemplary cause, is properly to be attributed to the person of the 
Holy Spirit, as the principal efficient cause. Thus also that which is 
eisewhere ascribed to the letter of the law is, by the same analogy, to 
be attributed to the person of the lawgiver. But it does not seem ne. 
cessary for us to make such a concession. The apostle does not call 
the law ‘the letter ;’? or the Gospel ‘ the Spirit ;’ but teaches that the 
letter is in the law, and the Spirit in the Gospel, so that they who minis- 
ter to the law, minister to the letter ; they who minister to the Gospel, 
to the Spirit. He calls that the letter, which is unable at first, and by 
itself, to convert a man; or to give a sinner the hope of life, much less 
to quicken him. By the Spirit, he understands both the person of th: 
Spirit, and his quickening grace; which is clearly disclosed, and ren- 
tered efficacious, by means of the Gospel. In a preceding verse, the 









ICAL. INSTITUTES 630 NX 
apostle undoubtedly distinguishes the Spirit from the doctrine, when he 
calls the Corinthians ‘the epistle of Christ, written not with ink, but > 
with the Spirit of the living God.’”’ (Exposition of Creed.) 

Finally that the Holy Ghost is a person, and not an attribute, is 
proved by the use of masculine pronouns and relatives in the Greek of 
the New Testament, in connection with the neuter noun rvevjua, Spirit : 
and by so many distinct personal acts being ascribed to him, as, to come, 
ta go, to be sent, to teach, to guide, to comfort, to make intercession, to 
hear witness, to give gifts, “dividing them to every man as he wit,’ 
to he vexed, grieved, and quenched. These cannot be applied to the 
mere fiction of a person, and they, therefore, establish the Spirit’s true 
personality. 

Some additional arguments, to those before given to establish the 
Diviniry of the Holy Ghost may also be adduced. 

The first is taken from his being the subject of blasphemy—* the 
blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men,” 
Matt. xii, 31. This blasphemy consisted in ascribing his miraculous 
works to Satan; and that he is capable of being blasphemed proves 
him to be as much a person as the Son; and it proves him to be Divine, 
because it shows that he may be sinned against, and so sinned against, 
that the blasphemer shall not be forgiven. A person he must be, or he 
could not be blasphemed ; a Divine person he must be to constitute 
this blasphemy a sin against him in the proper sense, and of so ma- 
lignant a kind as to place it beyond the reach of mercy. | 

He is called Gop. “ Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie unto 
the Holy Ghost? Why hast thou conceived this in thine heart? Thou 
hast not lied unto men; but unto God.” Ananias is said to have lied, 
particularly “unto the Holy Ghost,” because the apostles were under 
his special direction, in establishing the temporary regulation among 
Christians that they should have all things in common; the detection 
of the crime itself was a demonstration of the Divinity of the Spirit, 
because it showed his omniscience, his knowledge of the most secret 
ucts. In addition to the proof of his Divinity thus afforded by this 
listury, he is also called God, “’Thou hast not lied unto men; but unto 
Gov.” He is also called the Lorn, “ Now the Lord is that Spirit,” 
2 Cor. iii, 17. He is ereRNaL, “the eternal Spirit,” Heb. ix, 14. 
OMNIPRESENCE is ascribéd to him, “ Your body is the temple of the 
Holy Ghost ;” “ As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the 
sons of God.” Now, as all true Christians are his temples, and are led 
by him, he must be present to them at all times and in all places. He is 
said to be Omniscient, “The Spirit searcheth all things, even the deep 
things of Gop.” Here the Spirit is said to search or know “all things” 


¥ 


absolutely ; and then, to make this more emphatic, that he knows “ the 
deep things of God.” things hidden from every creature, the depths of 








640 ; THEOLOGICAL” INS 


his essence, and the secrets of his counsels ; for, that this is intended, 
appears from the next verse, where he is said to know “the things of 
God,” as the spirit of a man knows the things of a man. Supremx 
Maszxstry is also attributed to him, so that “to lie to him,” to “blas- 
pheme” him, “ to vex” him, to do him “ despite,” are sins, and render 
the offender liable to Divine punishment. 

He is the source of 1nsprration. “Holy men of God spake us they 
were moved by the Holy Ghost.” ‘He shall lead you into all truth.” 
He is the source and fountain of tire. “It is the Spirit that quick. 
eneth.” . “He that raised up Christ from the dead shall quicken your 
mortal bodies, by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” As we have seen 
him acting in the material creation, so he is the author of the New 
CREATION, which is as evidently a work of Divine power as the former : 
« Born of the Spirit ;” “The renewing of the Holy Ghost.” He is the 
author of religious conrort—* The Comforter.” The moral attributes 
of God are also given to him. Hox1ness, which includes all in one :-— 
he Hoty Ghost is his eminent designation. Goopnxss and GRacE are 
his attributes. “Thy Spirit is good.” “The Spirit of grace.” Trurn 
Jalso, for he is “the Spirit of truth.” 

' How impracticable it is to interpret the phrase, “’The Holy Ghost,” 

‘as a periphrasis for God himself, has been proved in considering some 

: of the above passages, and will be obvious from the slightest consider- 

y ation of the texts. A Spirit, which is the Spirit or Gop; which is so 

often distinguished rrom the Father: which “srxs” and “HEars” “the 

~} Father ;” which searcues “ the deep things” of God; whichis “sEnr” 

4 by the Father ; which “ prockepErH” from him; and who has special 

’ prayer addressed to him at the same time as the Father, cannot, though 

| “ one with him,” be the Father; and that he is not the Son, is acknow- 
; ledged on both sides. 

Asa Divine PERSON, our regards are, therefore, justly due to him as 
the object of worship and trust, of prayer and blessing ; duties to which 
we are specially called, both by the general consideration of his Divi- 
nity, and by that affectingly benevolent and attractive character under 
which he is presented to us in the whole Scriptures. In creation we 
see him moving upon the face of chaos, and reducing it to a beautif 11 
order; in providence, “renewing the face of the earth,” “ garnishing 
the heavens,” and “giving life’ to man. In grace we behold him 
expanding the prophetic scene to the vision of the seers of the Old Testa: 
ment, and making a perfect revelation of the doctrine of Christ to the 
apostles of the New. He “reproves the world of sin,” and works 
secret conviction of its evil and danger in the heart. He is “the Spirit 
of grace and supplication ;” the softened heart, the yielding will, all 
heavenly desires and tendencies are from him. He hastens to the 
iroubled spirits of penitent men, who are led by his influence to Christ, 


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sicOND. | THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 64: 


and in whose hearts he has wrought faith, with the news of pardon, and 
“bears witness” of their sonship “ with their spirit.” He aids thew 
“infirmities ;” makes “ intercession for them;” inspires thoughts ot 
consolation and feelings of peace ; plants and perfects in them what. 
soever things are pure, and lovely, and honest, and of good report ; 
delights in his own work in the renewed heart ; dwells in the soul as in 
a temple; and, after having rendered the spirit to God, without spot or 
wrinkle, or any such thing, sanctified and meet for heaven, finishes his 
benevolent and glorious work by raising the bodies of saints in immor- 
tal life at the last day. So powerfully does “ the Spirit of glory and of 
sod” claim our love, our praise, and our obedience! In the forms of 
the Churches of Christ, in all ages, he has, therefore, been associated 
with the Father and the Son, in equal glory and blessing; and where 
such forms are not in use, this distinct recognition of the Spirit, so 
much in danger of being neglected, ought, by ministers, to be most 
carefully and constantly made, in every gratulatory act of devotion. 
that so equally to each person of the eternal trinity glory may be given 
‘in the Church throughout all ages. Amen.” 

The essential and fundamental character of the doctrine of the holy 
and undivided trinity has been already stated, and the more fully the 
evidences of the Divinity of the Son and the Spirit are educed from 
the sacred’ writings, the more deeply we shall be impressed with this 
view, and the more binding will be our obligation to “ contend earnestly 
for” this part of “the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” 
Nor can the plea here be ever soundly urged, that this is a merely spe. 
culative doctrine; for, as it has been well observed by a learred writer, 
“The truth is, the doctrine of the trinity is-so far from being merely a 
matter of speculation, that it is the very essence of the Christian reli. 
gion, the foundation of the whole revelation, and connected with every 
part of it. All that is peculiar in this religion has relation to the re- 


demption of Christ, and the sanctification of the Spirit. And whoso - 


ever is endeavouring to invalidate these articles is overthrowing or 
undermining the authority of this dispensation, and reducing it to a 
good moral system only, or treatise of ethics. 

“If the Word, or Logos, who became incarnate, was a created being 
only, then the mystery of his incarnation, so much insisted on in Scrip- 
ture, and the love expressed to mankind thereby, so much magnified, 
dwindie into an interested service; and a short life of sufferings, con- 
cluded, indeed, with a painfui death, is rewarded with Divine honours, 
and a creature advanced thereby to the glory of the Creator; for the 
command is plain and express, that ‘all the angels of God’ should ‘ wor- 
ship him.’ And have not many saints and martyrs undergone the same 
sufferings without the like glorious recompense? And is not the advan- 
tage tg “hrist himself, by his incarnation and passion, greater on this 

oe 41 | 









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m42 THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTES. 
supposition, than to men, for whose sake the sacred writers represent 
this scheme of mercy undertaken ? 

“ Again: if the motions of the Holy Spirit, so frequently spoken of, 
are only figurative expressions, and do not necessarily imply any real 
person who is the author of them, or if this person be only a created 
being, then we are deprived of all hopes of Divine assistance in our 
spiritual warfare; and have nothing but our own natural abilities 
wherewith to contend against the world, the flesh, and the devil. . And 
is it not amazing that this article could ever be represented as a mere 
abstracted speculation, when our deliverance both from the penalty and 
power of sin does so plainly depend upon it? In the sacred writings a 
true faith is made as necessary as a right practice, and this in particular 
in order to that end. For Arianism, Socinianism, and all those several] 
heresies, of what kind or title soever, which destroy the Divinity of the 
Son and Holy Ghost, are, indeed, no other than different schemes of 
infidelity ; since the authority, end, and influence of the Gospel are as 
effectually made void by disowning the characters in which our Re. 
deemer and Sanctifier are there represented, as even by contesting the 
evidences of its Divine original. These notions plainly rob those two 
Divine persons of their operations and attributes, and of the honour due 





- 


to them; lessen the mercy and mystery of the scheme of our salvation ; _ 


degrade our notion of ourselves and our fellow creatures ; alter the na- 
ture of several duties, and weaken those great motives to the observance 
of all that true Christianity proposes to us.” (Dodwell.) 








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